We looked at the 30,978 UK private companies whose latest accounts show turnover of £10–100M, leaving out any with an insolvency notice. Just under a third, 9,694, are founder-owned in the sense that matters here: the people with significant control are individuals holding shares, with no parent company or fund above them. The rest belong to groups, to private equity, or to structures the register does not make clear.
Among the founder-owned companies the median age of the eldest controlling owner is 62. Some 5,500 have an owner aged 60 or over, and some 2,600 an owner aged 70 or over. Together, the companies with an owner of 60 or more turn over around £162bn a year, and those that report headcount employ more than 740,000 people.
Show the figures
| Owner’s age | Companies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under 35 | 81 | 0.8% |
| 35–39 | 218 | 2.3% |
| 40–44 | 436 | 4.5% |
| 45–49 | 771 | 8.0% |
| 50–54 | 1,056 | 10.9% |
| 55–59 | 1,586 | 16.4% |
| 60–64 | 1,613 | 16.7% |
| 65–69 | 1,321 | 13.7% |
| 70–74 | 958 | 9.9% |
| 75–79 | 764 | 7.9% |
| 80–84 | 542 | 5.6% |
| 85+ | 327 | 3.4% |
Who comes next?
Age alone says rather little. Plenty of owners in their sixties have a clear plan. What the register does show is who else sits on the board. Where the owner is 60 or over, the youngest director is 50 or older in 51% of cases, and 60 or older in 24%. So roughly a quarter of these companies have no director under 60.
That matters because the usual routes out of an owner-managed business (a sale to the management team, a family succession, or a sale to a buyer who needs a team to stay on) all depend on someone being ready to take over. Where nobody is, the options narrow, and widening them again can take years.
By size and sector
The pattern barely changes with size: 57% of owners are 60 or over at £10–25M of turnover, and 60% at £50–100M. It varies by sector. Agriculture and manufacturing have the oldest ownership, at about three in four and two in three aged 60 or over. Information and communication has the youngest, at 45%.
Show the figures
| Sector | Companies | Owner 60+ |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | 133 | 74% |
| Manufacturing | 1,155 | 68% |
| Real estate | 241 | 62% |
| Health and social care | 152 | 62% |
| Retail and wholesale | 1,465 | 61% |
| Hospitality | 234 | 59% |
| Professional services | 1,339 | 59% |
| Other services | 246 | 58% |
| Construction | 600 | 58% |
| Business support | 784 | 56% |
| Transport and logistics | 275 | 54% |
| Information and communication | 367 | 45% |
What it means for an owner
None of this means a wave of sales is about to arrive. Many owners will hand on to family, and many will carry on. But succession will be a live question for many of these businesses over the next decade, and owners who plan early have the most choice about how. An early view of value, of what a buyer would look for, and of who might lead the business afterwards costs little and keeps options open.
How we worked this out
Figures are from Companies House as at 26th September 2026: turnover from each company’s latest filed accounts, and ownership and ages from the register of people with significant control and the register of officers. A company counts as founder-owned where every person with significant control is an individual holding shares. The owner’s age is that of the eldest such person, worked out from the month and year of birth the register publishes. Ages outside 18 to 95 are left out as errors.
About four in five of the turnover figures were read from scanned accounts rather than tagged filings. Here, turnover only places a company in the £10–100M range, a much coarser reading than the profit figures the margins page relies on. The companies with tagged filings alone give the same answer: a median of 61 and 57% aged 60 or over.
The financial sector is left out of the sector chart, since in this range it is almost entirely holding companies, as are sectors with fewer than 100 founder-owned companies. No figure here identifies a company or a person.