Mullins in his London apartment.
Photographer: Felicity McCabe for Bloomberg MarketsWhy the UK’s Richest Plumber Regrets Selling Out to KKR
Charlie Mullins reaped $178 million as Wall Street firms buy out family businesses in home repair. Their industry may never be the same.
Charlie Mullins’ father worked in a toy-car factory. His mother cleaned homes. Today, Mullins has a £10 million London penthouse with a view of the Thames. “Tom Jones lives there, if you can believe it,” he says, pointing to the flat above him, where the Welsh singer is a neighbor.
Mullins can credit his dazzling rise to the unlikely intersection of high finance and blue-collar labor. Over four decades he built a successful plumbing business that eventually employed his children and grandchildren. At the end of 2021, he sold his company, Pimlico Plumbers Ltd., to Wall Street giant KKR & Co. for £140 million ($178 million). KKR and other private equity firms are looking to snap up thousands of family-owned outfits in the US and Europe that ply the home-services trades—plumbing, electrical, air conditioning and heating, landscaping and pest control.