Retail: business succession in the UK

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

45,528 UK retail companies (21.7%) have a director aged 60 or over.

10.7 points below the all-trades average of 32.4%.

Companies measured209,733

Director aged 60+45,528

Exposure rate21.7%

Companies House register·Measured base 3,631,842·Data as at 11 October 2026·Full methodology

209,733

Companies measured

45,528

With a director 60+

15,166

With a director 70+

21.7%

Exposure rate

Of the 45,528 with a director over 60, 3,241 score 50 or higher on business quality. That figure is an output of our own scoring model, not a Companies House figure. How we score it.

Retail by region

Region	Companies	60+	Rate
South West	13,304	4,219	31.7%
Wales	5,839	1,627	27.9%
South East	25,733	7,147	27.8%
Northern Ireland	4,072	1,052	25.8%
Scotland	10,652	2,697	25.3%
East Midlands	12,213	3,005	24.6%
North East	4,787	1,130	23.6%
East of England	18,088	4,241	23.4%
Yorkshire & The Humber	14,379	3,236	22.5%
West Midlands	18,450	3,864	20.9%
North West	23,417	4,765	20.3%
London	58,702	8,509	14.5%

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

Next step

This page counts director ages across the whole register. If you are looking to buy rather than to research, our Retail pages go further: we score each company on business quality and exit timing, and shortlist the ones worth approaching.

See UK Retail →

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, "Retail: business succession in the UK", UK Business Succession Index, 11 October 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/retail-store/

Need a cut that is not published here, such as 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 3,631,842 active UK companies where Companies House records an age bracket for at least one serving director (94.0% of the 3,863,328 companies on the active register). A company counts as succession-exposed when its oldest serving director is 60 or over. We do not use 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 11 October 2026; updated quarterly, next update January 2027. Full methodology.