A third of substantial British companies whose owner let go were bought by an unconnected company

What happened next, read from each company’s current register entry: 34.3 per cent were bought by an unconnected company, 26.3 per cent restructured under a holding company or the owner’s own vehicle, 23.9 per cent passed to another individual, and 15.4 per cent have no owner of 25 per cent or more recorded. Across all active companies seven in ten handovers pass to another person; at substantial companies, where the departing owner had a median age of 57, the largest single outcome is a sale.

A corporate owner appearing after an individual departs looks like a sale. Where its name shares a distinctive word with the company’s, or carries the departing owner’s surname, it is a holding company rather than a buyer, and separating those takes acquisition from 61 per cent of handovers to 34. Any count from this register that skips that test overstates how often British companies are sold. The test compares words in names and will be wrong at the margins in both directions.