A great many capable British businesses will close in the next decade, not because they failed, but because nobody worked out who would run them next.
The pattern is easy to describe and hard to see from the outside. Someone built a business over thirty or forty years. It works. It employs people who know what they are doing. The owner is now in their late sixties or seventies, has thought about stepping back for a while, and has not done anything about it — because selling a business is an unfamiliar, daunting process that nobody teaches you, and because there is always something more urgent this week.
Meanwhile there are people who would happily buy that business. Search fund buyers, first-time acquirers, trade buyers, and often the management team already sitting inside it. The two sides rarely find each other, and when they do it is usually through an accountant who happens to know both.
We read the public register at Companies House — the same register anyone can look at — and we read it systematically. Who controls each company, how old they are, whether anyone younger is standing behind them, and what the filed accounts say about the shape of the business.
That produces a list of companies where the ownership looks like it is running out of road. Not a list of businesses for sale — a list worth a letter.
We are open about what this is. We find companies by reading public filings, and the letters our subscribers send say so plainly. There is no pretence that a buyer happened to hear about the business through a friend of a friend.
Some decisions were made early and are not up for revision:
You may have arrived here because you received a letter, or because you were looking up what your business might be worth. Either way, two things are true and worth saying directly.
First, we may have a commercial interest in businesses like yours, either directly or through the buyers who subscribe to our service. We are not an independent adviser and you should not treat us as one. Before you sell anything, get your own corporate finance adviser and your own accountant.
Second, you can have your details removed in one click, with no account and no questions: remove my details. That removes you from every subscriber's view immediately and permanently. Nobody has to justify themselves to us to do that.
And if you would just like a rough idea of the numbers with no contact from anyone, the valuation tool gives you a range and keeps nothing unless you specifically ask us to get in touch.
Succession Radar is built and run by Sophie Wilson, founder of PromptWorks AI Ltd. PromptWorks builds AI-assisted software for small and mid-sized operators — the kind of businesses that do useful work and have never had software built for how they actually run.
This one came out of noticing the same pattern repeatedly: capable British businesses closing not because they failed, but because the ownership question never got answered in time. The register shows it plainly if you read it properly, and nobody was.
The company is backed by private investors, including one with a corporate finance background. They are not involved in day to day operation.
If you reply to a letter, you get Sophie — not a call centre and not a sales team. There is no obligation and nothing formal about a first conversation; it is usually just working out whether there is anything worth discussing at all.
PromptWorks AI Ltd, company number 17305850, registered at 66 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NA. Contact us via the contact page.