Plumbers tap into a fortune

Three plumbers who started their Black Country business with £100 each have sold up - for £30 million.

Power giant E.on has struck a deal to buy Lower Gornal plumbing firm the CHN Group, which employs 430 staff. It means an instant fortune for CHN bosses Robert Hopkins, Roy Nicholls and Ian Cole, who have spent 37 years building the company up.

While Mr Hopkins and Mr Nicholls have both left the company following the takeover, Mr Cole will remain as a consultant for the next 12 months to oversee the handover.

Mr Cole, aged 62, Gornal-born and a plumber since he was 16, spoke of his deep regret at an end of an era for the company.

He said: "The day the company's shareholders agreed to the deal was probably the saddest day of my life other than burying my mum and dad. E.on simply made an offer that was too good to turn down.

"I think E.on will look after the staff and invest in the business, but it was gut-wrenching having to tell everyone after nearly 40 years that we had been taken over."E.on, which supplies gas and electricity to 4.9 million customers in central England and employs 18,00 people in the UK, has immediately moved to reassure staff at Lower Gornal-based CHN.

E.on's managing director of energy services, Don Leiper, said: "I can assure them that we recognise their expertise and experience and that's one of the reasons why we bought the group."

The size of the multi-million pound deal is not being revealed but it is understood to be between £20 million and £30 million.

CHN - Cole, Hopkins & Nicholls - was started by the three with £100 apiece in the depths of the power strikes and blackouts in 1970.

Over the past 37 years the company has grown to run 11 offices across the West Midlands.

By Simon Penfold