Finding a business to buy before it is for sale
Most owner-managed businesses that change hands are never advertised. The owner gets to retirement age, nobody younger is in line, and the sale happens quietly to whoever asked first. Succession Radar helps you be the one who asks.
It reads the public Companies House register and finds companies where everyone in control is approaching retirement age and the register shows no materially younger controller. This page sets out how buyers, search funds, trade acquirers and buy-and-build platforms use it to build a pipeline of targets and open a first conversation.
What the register can tell you
Companies House publishes the month and year of birth of every director and person with significant control, the shareholdings filed with each confirmation statement, the filed accounts and the charges registered against a company. Put together, they show who controls a business, roughly how old they are, how the shares are split and how big the business is.
A company scores as a succession signal when its controllers are all over the age threshold and nobody materially younger appears in control. That is not a statement that the owner wants to sell. It is a reason to ask, and the evidence for it is shown beside every score.
Finding targets, step by step
Pick a region and a sector
Start a search with a region, or a postcode area, and a sector or sub-sector. Then narrow it with the filters you would use on any deal screen: the signal type, the age bracket of the eldest controller, filed turnover, net assets, operating profit or EBITDA where they are filed, employees as filed, the number of controllers, and whether a parent company or group sits above.
Read the score and the evidence behind it
Every company carries a succession score, and on a paid plan the working behind it, factor by factor: the controllers’ ages, how the equity is split, whether an estate or a deceased controller appears, and what is estimated rather than filed. Set a minimum score to keep only the clearest cases, and read the evidence before you rely on any of them.
Shortlist, map and watch
Work the results as a table or on a map by registered office, move companies along the pipeline board as you qualify them, and add the ones you are serious about to a watchlist. On a paid plan the watchlist can send a daily digest when a company files something that matters: a director appointed or resigned, a change of control, a charge registered or satisfied.
Write to the owner in your own name
Draft letter starts a first letter from the record, printed with your details, to the registered office or an address from the company’s confirmed website. Before you send, it lists what to check: an estate on the company, a parent in control, ownership that is only estimated, an office shared with other companies. Log each letter, call and meeting in the outreach log so the thread is never lost. Valuation and funding beside each record gives an asset floor from the filed accounts and the regional funds worth checking.
An illustration
An invented example: a buyer of precision engineering businesses in the Midlands searches that region and sector, with the eldest controller 65 or over, filed net assets above £500,000 and no parent company. The search returns a list of companies, each with its score and evidence. The buyer reads the evidence, drops the ones with a parent in control or an office shared with dozens of others, moves a dozen to the board, and writes a short letter to each. A few reply. That is the whole method: a better list, read carefully, and a polite first letter.
The approach is yours, and so are its rules. Succession Radar contacts nobody. Letters go out in your name, and if you telephone or email, the rules on direct marketing apply to you as the sender, including screening against the Corporate Telephone Preference Service. Ages are approximate, because the register gives only a month and year of birth, and anyone named on the register can remove their details from the service at any time.
Start with three free searches
The free tier gives you three searches, three results each, with signal types and age bands, and no card. When you want the full list, monthly access (£149 +VAT a month, rolling) unlocks unlimited results, exact shareholdings, the score’s working, letters and outreach tracking. The annual licence (£49 +VAT a month, billed as £588 +VAT for 12 months) adds CSV export. If you are funding the purchase, read how UK acquisitions are funded; for how the score works, read the method.