Marketing: business succession in the UK

Name: Marketing business succession in the UK
Creator: ExitRadar
License: https://www.exitradar.co.uk/terms

8,020 UK marketing companies — 20.6% — have a director aged 60 or over.

11.9 points below the all-trades average of 32.5%.

Companies measured38,896

Director aged 60+8,020

Exposure rate20.6%

Companies House register·Measured base 3,475,770·Data as at 13 August 2026·Full methodology

38,896

Companies measured

8,020

With a director 60+

2,225

With a director 70+

20.6%

Exposure rate

Of the 8,020 with a director over 60, 340 score 50 or higher on business quality — an output of our own scoring model, not a Companies House figure. How we score it.

Marketing by region

Region	Companies	60+	Rate
South West	2,520	686	27.2%
South East	5,401	1,397	25.9%
Northern Ireland	386	92	23.8%
East of England	3,090	730	23.6%
East Midlands	1,561	343	22%
West Midlands	2,352	510	21.7%
Wales	855	180	21.1%
Yorkshire & The Humber	2,219	462	20.8%
Scotland	1,273	258	20.3%
North East	733	148	20.2%
North West	3,789	697	18.4%
London	14,700	2,513	17.1%

Combinations with fewer than 250 measured companies are not listed separately. They are still counted in every total on this page.

Part of the UK Business Succession Index.

Cite this page

These figures are free to quote and reproduce, including in commercial work, with attribution to ExitRadar and a link to this page.

ExitRadar, "Marketing: business succession in the UK", UK Business Succession Index, 13 August 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/prof-marketing/

Need a cut that is not published here — a different trade grouping, a finer geography, or the underlying distribution? Get in touch and we will usually provide it. Methodology.

Method. Figures cover the 3,475,770 active UK companies where Companies House records an age bracket for at least one serving director — 93.8% of the 3,706,712 companies on the active register. A company counts as succession-exposed when its oldest serving director is 60 or over — not the board average, which would hide a 70-year-old founder sitting alongside younger co-directors. The business-quality figure covers only the subset our model assesses — see the methodology for why that is far smaller than the number with filed accounts. Data as at 13 August 2026; updated quarterly, next update October 2026. Full methodology.