When Nick Millican’s Greycoat Real Estate established its Paris office in 2025, the move represented more than geographic expansion. It signaled confidence that the “brown to green” refurbishment strategy Greycoat has refined in London over the past decade can scale across European markets—and that the regulatory, market, and tenant forces driving sustainable development in the UK are coming for continental developers next.
Paris is the test case. As one of Europe’s most significant commercial real estate markets, the city faces the same dual pressures reshaping London: aging office stock that doesn’t meet modern environmental standards, and tightening regulations that make demolition increasingly difficult to justify. For developers like Nick Millican who have spent years perfecting the art of transformation over replacement, Paris offers a glimpse into what sustainable urban development will look like across Europe’s capitals in the coming decade.
The London Laboratory
To understand what Greycoat’s Paris expansion means for European real estate, you need to understand what the firm learned in London. Under Millican’s leadership since 2012, Greycoat has positioned itself at the forefront of sustainable property development—not through flashy new construction, but through the painstaking work of transforming existing buildings into high-performance, environmentally responsible spaces.
The philosophy centers on embedded carbon—the greenhouse gas emissions generated during a building’s entire lifecycle from material extraction and manufacturing through construction, maintenance, and eventual demolition. When you demolish a building, you’re not just destroying physical structure; you’re negating the carbon investment already made. Every foundation poured, steel beam erected, and concrete slab laid carries emissions that become wasted when the building comes down.
“It’s extremely hard to demolish a building and then use what you’ve taken to then build a new building,” Millican explains. “It’s not really practical. So the more you can retain, the better the carbon footprint of what you’re doing.”
The numbers support this approach. Retrofitting an existing building emits 50-75% less carbon than constructing a new one of comparable size. Refurbishment diverts up to 90% of a building’s materials from landfills. And in a world where construction accounts for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, “building less” by transforming what already exists has become one of the most effective climate strategies available.
Greycoat’s December 2023 acquisition of 20 Finsbury Dials with Goldman Sachs Asset Management exemplifies this philosophy in practice. The 140,000-square-foot office building in the City of London is undergoing comprehensive “brown to green” transformation targeting BREEAM Outstanding, EPC A, and WELL Platinum ratings—the highest environmental certifications available.
The project includes replacing all windows to improve thermal performance, insulating the existing facade, overhauling HVAC systems to energy-efficient models, implementing advanced water conservation, and using sustainable materials throughout. But what makes it particularly innovative is Greycoat’s approach to material reuse: elements of the old facade are being ground down and transformed into tiles for the building’s flooring—circular economy principles in tangible practice.
Dan Higginson, Greycoat’s Director of Development, frames it as proof that “you don’t necessarily need to build a new building to have it perform in a certain way. You can actually, through sensible intervention and with a bit of thought, get an existing building to perform.”
The Regulatory Tailwind
What Greycoat discovered in London is that refurbishment isn’t just environmentally responsible—it’s increasingly a regulatory necessity. Planning authorities now require substantial justification for demolition, particularly in boroughs like Westminster, which has taken the strongest stance against tearing down existing structures.
“You have to really justify why you’re doing it,” Millican notes. “It is not just a case that you make a bit more money.”
This regulatory environment pushes developers toward refurbishment, and similar dynamics are emerging across Europe. Paris and other major European cities are recognizing that their existing building stock represents both challenge and opportunity. Over 70% of today’s buildings are expected to still be standing in 2050, which means the path to decarbonization runs through refurbishment, not replacement.
The market is responding. Sustainable buildings in London command an average “green premium” of 11.6% in rents compared to traditional properties, according to JLL. By 2030, demand for low-carbon office space in London is expected to exceed supply by 35%. More than 7,600 companies have committed to the Science Based Targets initiative, with over 80% of those commitments made in the last two years. For these companies, office space has become tangible expression of climate commitments.
These forces—regulatory pressure, tenant demand, investor focus on ESG credentials—don’t stop at the English Channel. They’re reshaping how commercial real estate operates across Europe’s major markets, creating conditions where developers with proven refurbishment expertise hold distinct advantages.
Why Paris Matters
When Millican decided to establish Greycoat’s European platform, Paris was the obvious choice. The city offers the same fundamentals that made London fertile ground for Greycoat’s approach: significant aging office stock, institutional capital flows, tightening environmental regulations, and strong tenant demand for high-quality, sustainable space.
To lead Greycoat France, Millican recruited Arnaud Malbos, who brings 17 years at CDPQ overseeing European Real Estate investment, plus nine years at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. Arnaud’s track record includes major Paris projects like the DUO towers (100,000 square meters) and Cœur Défense (160,000 square meters)—exactly the kind of complex urban transformations where Greycoat’s capabilities shine.
In September 2025, Millican added Semih Bayar Eren as Directeur Général and Partner for Greycoat France and General Counsel globally. Semih brings over 15 years of international legal, management, and corporate finance expertise, with particular strength in ESG and governance—critical capabilities as European sustainability regulations tighten.
The pairing of Arnaud and Semih reflects Millican’s deliberate approach to building European capacity. Both worked together at Ivanhoé Cambridge/La Caisse, bringing established chemistry and shared institutional knowledge. They’re not learning how to work together; they’re applying proven partnership dynamics in a new geography.
This team structure signals that Greycoat’s Paris operations aren’t experimental. The firm is committing senior partners with deep European expertise to execute the same refurbishment-focused, sustainability-driven strategy that’s worked in London—but adapted for continental markets with their own regulatory frameworks, capital structures, and tenant expectations.
The European Blueprint
What makes Paris particularly instructive as Greycoat’s European entry point is that the city’s challenges and opportunities mirror those facing major commercial real estate markets across the continent. Aging office stock needs modernization. Regulations increasingly favor transformation over demolition. Tenants demand spaces that align with their environmental commitments. Investors prioritize assets with strong ESG credentials.
Greycoat’s model addresses all these pressures simultaneously. By focusing on “heavy repositioning” of vacant or soon-to-be-vacant buildings, and less intensive refurbishment of occupied properties, the firm captures the value gap between underinvested older infrastructure and new-generation buildings. The approach minimizes embedded carbon waste while delivering high-specification, certified spaces that command premium rents and attract quality tenants.
“I think we’ll see over time more and more focus on retention and refurbishment rather than demolition and rebuild,” Millican predicts. It’s a trend he’s not just observing but actively shaping through Greycoat’s investments.
The firm’s joint venture model—partnering with institutional capital from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Ivanhoé Cambridge, and others—also translates seamlessly to European markets. These relationships provide credibility and access to capital for continental deals, while Arnaud’s CDPQ connections and Semih’s institutional experience strengthen Greycoat’s ability to source and structure partnerships across borders.
The Continental Cascade
If Greycoat’s Paris platform succeeds—and the team Millican has assembled suggests it will—the implications extend beyond France. The firm has identified Germany as a potential next market, and Semih’s fluency in German (along with French, Turkish, English, and Spanish) positions Greycoat to operate across multiple European jurisdictions.
But the broader lesson isn’t about Greycoat specifically. It’s about what Paris demonstrates regarding the future of European sustainable development. The forces driving refurbishment over demolition in London—embedded carbon preservation, regulatory pressure, tenant demand, investment criteria—are continental, not insular. As these pressures intensify across European markets, developers who have mastered transformation will hold distinct advantages over those still defaulting to demolition and reconstruction.
Paris isn’t just where Greycoat is expanding. It’s where the firm is proving that sustainable urban development at scale requires rethinking construction entirely—seeing existing buildings not as problems to demolish but as opportunities to transform. For European real estate, that shift may define the next decade.