Adding values and know-how to local vigour

In 2016, after years of working for Skanska, you became the CEO of Echo Investment. What did you find most satisfying in this new role? What have you changed at Echo?

Nicklas Lindberg, Echo Investment: Echo was a great company back then, and is still today. When I came from Skanska, which was a multi-international business, Echo was a purely Polish organisation with all the pluses and minuses that comes with that. I think what I managed to bring to Echo was the experience of running a global business and the ability to implement some of those values. When I joined the company in 2016, it was going through a big transition from its previous strategy and was mainly a commercial developer. Since then we have built a strong residential business with projects for sale and for rent, we have offices and two retail centres, and are well known for our multifunctional destination projects. When I came to Echo from Skanska, I was trying to bring my experience from a big international organisation to a local, Polish organisation. I think that what I managed to bring is the leadership to encourage people to think outside of the box, and that’s how we’ve constantly striven to be that little bit ahead of the market – seeing what trends are around the corner and how can we adapt to them.

The market can change very dramatically – we’ve had the pandemic; now there’s the war in Ukraine with all its consequences. How can you run a company to make it resistant to such unforeseen events?

Our strength, and what makes us unique, is that we have many different legs to stand on. We have a very large residential business, having started in 2018 with Resi4Rent, which is today the largest PRS operation in Poland and one of the biggest in the CEE region. On top of that, we have F&B and entertainment, we have offices and a retail component to our activities. It is an ever-changing business. If you look back a year ago, residential was the flavour of the month – everybody wanted to do residential. Today people are saying, “oh, residential is difficult”. Twelve months ago, offices were “difficult”. But now everyone wants to do offices. It’s changing all the time. The same thing happened when we launched Resi4Rent. Everyone back then told me: “Nicklas, why do you want to do residential for rent? In Poland it makes no sense, you should sell these apartments.” Now, in 2022, everybody sees the potential of PRS clearly and we have already built a strong platform. We carry out projects that may not sound like the best idea in the short term, but we look at the other markets, at what has proven to be solid there. In Sweden, I grew up renting apartments. You live there in rented apartments for many years until you buy your first one. So we thought this would be a trend that would eventually come to Poland. Now this market has been accelerated by the mortgage rate hikes and over 5 million Ukrainians crossing into Poland. We’re constantly trying to figure out what the next opportunity is going to be and how we can further develop ourselves. One of challenges that comes with being the market leader is the constant need to change quicker than the market, because otherwise someone else will take the mantle from you.

So keeping an eye on global trends is essential?

Exactly, especially adjusting global trends to the local market where we live. You can’t always copy-and-paste ready-to-go solutions that work, for example, in the residential market in Sweden or Germany, and think that they would also work in Poland. And you also need to look at what’s in demand today. After the lockdowns we brought everyone back to the office. Maybe this is my Scandinavian way of looking at things, because I was trying to implement this in the way Sweden was doing it. I said, fine, we need to be careful, but keeping everyone at home is not the right solution, from the economic point of view, but also because a large part of our business involves collaboration. I got calls from my people working on the construction site, telling me: “Nicklas, everybody else is at home. Why should we go to work every day?” I spent a week traveling around all the construction sites. We made different adjustments, to make sure the work was safe. We were working hard and we benefited, because everything was delivered according to schedule. What I’m trying to do is find a way of moving forward – not always together with the economy, but sometimes slightly against it, to find existing benefits.

In 2020, Echo published its first sustainability report. And the importance of ESG issues continues to grow. How has this changed Echo approach and plans?

When I came to Poland with Skanska in 2008, we were one of the pioneers in bringing in green certification and educating people in each step of how to do it, all the way from the city authorities to the tenants of the project. Today, for us at Echo, ESG is so much more than just a green stamp. It’s about how to change the whole way we’re living. I think that our Browary Warszawskie development and Fuzja in Łódź are great examples of our ESG philosophy. Here in Warsaw, we turned a 5 ha site into a new area within the city centre. We have provided a lot of greenery, restaurants and amenities. This is really somewhere where people can live – and not only live. You can work and spend leisure time in the same area. And this is what we are trying to do with many of our projects, not just by planting trees, but by creating this kind of area. In 2008, ESG was just an official stamp for a building and nobody really knew what it meant. In 2022, however, it’s all about the entire way we live, how we work, how we take care of the planet. ESG has always been a concept that has fascinated me. I think it’s a process that we’ll never complete – we’re constantly reaching for the next target.

How important is the cooperation with local authorities and with local residents when it comes to your “destination projects”?

We’ve carried out two projects of this kind so far and it was crucial to work both with the city and the local community. But it was equally important to respect the history of the place. All our destination projects hark back to what they used to be before. Browary Warszawskie, as the name suggests, used to be a brewery, and we were trying to find some way to adapt all of its historic cellars. We needed to open them up with big windows to allow the daylight in, so we had to talk to the city and during the whole process respect what they are trying to preserve, the history of the buildings, while adding modern functions to them. The same was true with Fuzja in Łódź, which was once a large power plant with huge machinery. We had to find the way of integrating the machinery into the project, and so we decided that it should be positioned at the heart of it. The trend for destination projects started in Warsaw with Hala Koszyki, but now we have Elektrownia Powiśle, Norblin Factory and our Browary Warszawskie as well. When you walk around the city on a hot summer night, all these places are full. They genuinely draw in a lot of people. I think this is a feature unique to Poland that I haven’t seen that in other places – so many redevelopments on massive areas. It’s really fascinating.

What do you like most about Poland? Maybe it’s has something you don’t have in Sweden?

I’ve lived in Poland for 14 years. Two of my kids were born here and Poland has always been a huge part of our lives and who we are. I’ve met a lot of great people here – fantastic, ambitious individuals. You really can build up a big organisation in Poland and everything is possible. You can do a lot of things that you would never be able to do in other countries, like Sweden, mostly because of the different historical background. For example, developing a project like Browary Warszawskie – finding a 5 ha plot in the city centre and turning it into something else. It’s something that I love about being in Poland, that you have the chance to create new city centres within the cities. For me, being here has been extremely rewarding. I love Sweden, but professionally it has been much more rewarding to stay in Poland. But on the other hand, without all my years at Skanska and in Sweden, I wouldn’t have been able to reap these rewards as much as I have.

Nicklas Lindberg

Nicklas was appointed CEO of Echo Investment in 2016 and he is responsible for the strategy and development of the company. Until 2015 Nicklas Lindberg was employed by Skanska Group, where he held several top positions, such as president of Skanska Commercial Development Europe (CDE), head of Skanska Property Poland, CFO and CEO of Skanska Russia and a manager of residential development units in the Nordics. He graduated from the University of Lund in 2001.