Retail succession in North West

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

4,765 of 23,417 retail companies in North West (20.3%) have a director aged 60 or over.

That is the 11th highest of 12 UK regions for this trade.

Companies measured23,417

Director aged 60+4,765

Exposure rate20.3%

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

23,417

Companies measured

4,765

Director 60+

1,515

Director 70+

20.3%

Exposure rate

The UK average across all trades is 32.4%; retail nationally runs at 21.7%.

Measure	Companies
Retail companies in North West measured	23,417
Oldest director aged 60 or over	4,765
Oldest director aged 70 or over	1,515

Of the 4,765 with a director over 60, 329 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 in other regions

Region	60+	Rate
South West	4,219	31.7%
Wales	1,627	27.9%
South East	7,147	27.8%
Northern Ireland	1,052	25.8%
Scotland	2,697	25.3%
East Midlands	3,005	24.6%
North East	1,130	23.6%
East of England	4,241	23.4%

Other trades in North West

Trade	60+	Rate
Consultancy Services	7,211	34.2%
Lettings	7,190	33.4%
Investment	3,732	25.6%
Investment / Fund Management	3,512	36%
Other Leisure	3,449	27.7%
Engineering Services	2,931	36%
Property Development	2,398	37.6%
IT Services / Consultancy	2,207	20%

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 →

See all Retail succession data or everything in North West.

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 succession in North West", UK Business Succession Index, 11 October 2026. https://www.exitradar.co.uk/succession/retail-store/north-west/

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.