McKinsey's landmark study revealed six million US businesses will face ownership transitions by 2035. We analysed 3.8 million UK companies and found Britain faces the same crisis: 852,756 companies with an average director age of 60+, 2.2 million single-director firms, and 173,807 owner-run businesses with a single director aged 60+ and no internal successor.
British business is about to undergo its largest ownership shift in modern history, and almost nobody is talking about it.
In February 2026, the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility published The Great Ownership Transfer, on the wave of small-business ownership transitions now reaching the United States. About six million US businesses will face ownership transitions by 2035, and more than a million of those are viable candidates for sale, worth up to $5 trillion in enterprise value. In 2022, 92% of US exits ended in closure: 5% were sales and 3% were transfers. The businesses don't fail. The market for passing them on simply doesn't work.
The report confirmed something we've been seeing in UK company data for years. So we ran the numbers on this side of the Atlantic.
We analysed 3.8 million active UK companies on the Companies House register. The picture that emerges is, if anything, more acute than the American one.
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Build your buy boxAge and director-count shares are computed over the 3.6 million companies with that data on file (93.9% of the register), not over the full 3.8 million.
McKinsey found that more than half of US small-business owners are now over 55, up from roughly 30% in 2002. One in four is 65 or older.
The UK register shows an ageing ownership base of comparable scale. It is not the same measurement (McKinsey counts owners by individual age, we count companies by the average age of the board), but the direction is identical. Across the 3.6 million active companies for which we hold a director age bracket:
A quarter of UK companies are led by a board whose average age is 60 or over. McKinsey’s one-in-four figure counts individual owners aged 65 or over, so the two are not the same measurement and the closeness of the numbers is a coincidence rather than a finding.
| What is measured | United States — McKinsey | United Kingdom — ExitRadar register | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owners at or past traditional retirement age | 1 in 4owners aged 65 or over | 23.8%of companies, average board age 60+ | Not like-for-like |
| The wider ageing cohort | 50%+owners over 55, from about 30% in 2002 | 52.8%of companies, average board age 50+ | Not like-for-like |
| Businesses facing an ownership transition | 6mUS SMBs by 2035 | 1,036,295companies, average board age 50 to 60 | Not like-for-like |
| Viable candidates for sale | 1m+US firms, up to $5tn in enterprise value | 173,807sole director 60+, assets above £50,000, no successor | Not like-for-like |
| Exits ending in closure rather than transfer | 92%of 2022 US exits — 5% sold, 3% transferred | —not measured | US only |
| Where the exits sit by business value | ~80%of US exits are firms worth under $2m | —not measured on the same basis | US only |
| Companies with no internal successor | —not published | 60.2%of companies have a single director | UK only |
| Not one row is a like-for-like comparison. McKinsey counts owners by individual age; we count companies by average board age, in ten-year brackets. The close-looking percentages in the first two rows are coincidence, not a match. | |||
But the UK has an additional structural vulnerability that the US data doesn't capture as cleanly: the single-director company.
This is the most important number in the entire dataset.
Of the 3.6 million active UK companies for which we hold a director count, 2,154,332 have just one director. No co-directors. No named successors. No family members on the board. No internal succession infrastructure whatsoever.
In the US, McKinsey describes the absence of succession planning as a behavioural problem: owners who don't plan ahead. In the UK, it's structural. As we documented in our earlier analysis of Britain's succession crisis, nearly two-thirds of companies are constitutionally incapable of an internal succession because there is nobody else in the building with legal authority over the business.
Of those 2.2 million single-director companies:
These aren't statistics about future risk. These are businesses where the succession clock is already running.
McKinsey's most striking finding was that the majority of US business closures are not failures but viable companies that simply had no path to transfer.
We can see the UK equivalent forming in real time.
When we filter our active company database to find businesses with a sole director over 60, total assets above £50,000, and no succession infrastructure, we find 173,807 companies meeting all three criteria. They hold £198.9 billion in aggregate total assets.
These are not marginal businesses. They are established, asset-backed companies with real economic value. They simply have a single point of failure: one person, approaching retirement, with no plan and no successor.
Widen the lens slightly, to sole directors over 60 with any positive assets, and the number rises to 365,964 companies holding £201.6 billion in total assets. Within that group, tens of thousands also have 15+ years of director tenure, indicating the classic founder-operator profile.
At the extreme end, 120,515 companies have a sole director in their 70s, collectively holding £57.6 billion in total assets. For these businesses, the transition isn't a five-year horizon. It's now.
One of McKinsey's most useful contributions is the concept of the "missing middle": businesses too large and valuable to simply close, but too small to attract institutional buyers or private equity attention.
In the US, they estimate that nearly 80% of projected ownership exits will occur among businesses valued at under $2 million. These firms fall between systems: too complex for startup-oriented support programmes, too small to generate the fees that attract professional intermediaries.
The UK version of this gap is visible in our data. When we run our scoring model down to the businesses that combine a genuinely good company with an owner our timing model reads as likely to move, we find 21,385 PURSUE-grade companies.
These are the missing middle. They're viable. They're often profitable. They have clear exit triggers. But they're not listed anywhere. They don't have brokers. Most of their owners haven't consciously decided to sell, but the data shows they match every profile of a business that would benefit from an ownership conversation. We tracked what actually happens to these businesses: in the past year, the owners of at least 901 solvent, profitable UK businesses chose to close them, with £236m of combined EBITDA between them. That is the missing middle in company-level detail. We break down the full picture (broker success rates, exit routes, and tax pressure) in our UK Business Exit Statistics.
The sectors where these companies cluster tell their own story. The sectors with the most PURSUE targets are construction, B2B services, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare. Far from distressed, these are the productive backbone of the UK economy.
Geographically, the deepest pipelines by count sit in London and the South East, with the North West behind them, though on concentration the order inverts, and those three sit at the bottom of the twelve regions on exit-ready companies per 10,000. Established, owner-aged businesses are found across every region. For a full regional breakdown of where these businesses sit, see Where Are the UK's Exit-Ready Businesses?
McKinsey identifies a structural failure in the US: the systems that support entrepreneurship are built for founding companies, not transferring them. Incubators, accelerators, and technical assistance are geared toward startups. Acquisition remains largely invisible, unstandardised, and unsupported.
The UK picture is functionally identical. Business brokers, the traditional route to market, sell only about 20% of the businesses they take on, and that figure is generous because it includes mid-cap deals where completion rates are higher. For small SMEs, the effective success rate is far worse.
The matching problem runs deeper than broker capacity. It's an information problem. Qualified buyers, from search fund operators, ETA practitioners to strategic acquirers, spend months searching for businesses that fit their criteria. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of companies displaying clear succession signals sit invisibly in public filing data, unknown to the people who would buy them.
McKinsey frames the solution as building "a coordinated market for ownership transfer." They argue that buying a business should become as visible, supported, and scalable as starting one.
That's precisely the gap we built ExitRadar to address.
The demographic pressures are not going to ease. The 50–60 age bracket in our database contains 1,036,295 companies, more than a million businesses whose directors will age into the 60+ cohort over the next decade. Behind them, another 1,019,696 companies sit in the 40–50 bracket. The pipeline of future succession pressure extends decades into the future.
Tax policy is compounding the urgency. Business Asset Disposal Relief now carries an 18% rate, up from 10% just two years ago. The direction of travel is clear: waiting gets progressively more expensive for any owner contemplating an exit.
McKinsey estimates that effective ownership transitions could preserve up to 12 million US jobs and protect about $250 billion in annual local spending power. The UK numbers are proportionally smaller but no less significant for the communities and employees involved. Our data shows 173,807 viable businesses with a sole director over 60, total assets above £50,000, and no internal successor, collectively holding £198.9 billion in assets.
The businesses exist. The buyers exist. The data to connect them exists. What's been missing is the infrastructure to make those connections at scale.
The wave of small-business ownership changes now underway as the baby-boomer generation retires. McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility named it in February 2026: about six million US businesses face ownership transitions by 2035, and more than a million are viable candidates for sale worth up to $5 trillion.
Yes, on a comparable scale. 852,756 active UK companies have an average director age of 60 or over, and another 1,036,295 sit in the 50-to-60 band. The UK and US figures are not the same measurement (see the comparison above).
852,756 have an average director age of 60 or over; 212,848 are at 70 or over. Both measured against the 3,580,927 active companies whose director age bracket we hold.
2,154,332 (60.2% of those whose board size we know) have a single director, so there is nobody else on the board to hand the business to. 463,253 of those sole directors are 60 or over, and 173,807 of their companies also hold more than £50,000 in assets.
Usually it closes. McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility estimates 510,000 US small-business exits in 2022: 92% closed, 5% sold, 3% transferred to new owners. We publish no UK equivalent, because dated ownership-transfer events were not captured on the UK register before August 2026, so any UK split would be an estimate, not a measurement.
Not directly, because the two are measured differently. McKinsey counts owners by individual age; we count companies by average board age, from the Companies House register. Where the numbers look close (a quarter of US owners aged 65 or over against 23.8% of UK companies with an average board age of 60 or over), that is coincidence, not a match.
Companies too substantial to close but too small to interest institutional buyers or a broker. Ours is a grade rather than a value band: 21,385 companies score PURSUE, meaning the business reads as sound and its ownership signals point towards a change. Almost none are listed for sale anywhere.
Ten-year brackets, not dates of birth. Companies House publishes an officer’s month and year of birth; we store only the bracket (50-60, 60-70, 70+) and discard the date. So we can count companies with a director in the 60-70 band, but not say how far through it anyone is, and we cannot report a share of owners over 55 or 65 at all.
UK figures come from Companies House bulk data under the Open Government Licence v3.0, recalculated weekly and last refreshed in September 2026. Every US figure is McKinsey’s, cited rather than reproduced.
Yes, for companies meeting the acquisition criteria. ExitRadar scores the register for exit readiness and lets you filter by trade, region, owner age and size. The succession figures by trade and region are free to read at the UK Business Succession Index.
ExitRadar data. Counts come from the 3.8 million companies on the active Companies House register, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Figures refreshed September 2026 and recalculated weekly.
The bases behind the percentages. Age shares (52.8% at 50+, 23.8% at 60+, 5.9% at 70+) are measured against the 3.6 million companies whose director age bracket we hold (93.9% of the register). The single-director share uses the 3.6 million whose board size we hold. Dividing a percentage back into the headline count will not reproduce it.
Director ages are 10-year brackets, not dates of birth. Companies House publishes an officer’s month and year of birth; we store only the bracket (50-60, 60-70, 70+) and discard the date. So we can count companies with a director in the 60-70 band, but not say how far through it anyone is. Nothing here forecasts a named business or a specific year.
Assets are total assets. Asset figures are total assets from the latest filed accounts, not net assets. Enterprise value, which includes earnings multiples and goodwill, would be materially higher. These are a floor, not a valuation.
Third-party figures. US figures are McKinsey’s throughout, cited rather than reproduced: The Great Ownership Transfer: A New Era of Business Stewardship, February 2026.
About ExitRadar: ExitRadar analyses public UK company data to identify businesses showing succession and exit signals. Our reports provide pre-approach intelligence for search fund operators, business brokers, and prospective acquirers, helping qualified buyers find businesses ready to transition before they disappear from the market. Explore companies now.