Retail: business succession in the UK

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

43,920 UK retail companies — 21.9% — have a director aged 60 or over.

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

Companies measured200,951

Director aged 60+43,920

Exposure rate21.9%

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

200,951

Companies measured

43,920

With a director 60+

14,250

With a director 70+

21.9%

Exposure rate

Of the 43,920 with a director over 60, 2,918 score 50 or higher on business quality — 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	13,235	4,239	32%
Wales	5,916	1,764	29.8%
South East	22,490	6,015	26.7%
Scotland	10,346	2,680	25.9%
Northern Ireland	3,911	1,010	25.8%
East of England	14,793	3,692	25%
North East	4,768	1,165	24.4%
East Midlands	10,320	2,468	23.9%
Yorkshire & The Humber	14,352	3,302	23%
North West	22,959	4,799	20.9%
West Midlands	17,057	3,544	20.8%
London	60,714	9,210	15.2%

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, 13 August 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/retail-store/

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.