Companies House is the most powerful free tool an acquisition entrepreneur has, and most buyers never touch it. Five million UK company records, free, no login required. Filter by sector, location, incorporation date, company status. Pull director names and dates of birth. That combination lets you build a prospecting list of retirement-age owners in any sector, any geography, before a broker ever gets involved. Here is exactly how to do it.

What Can You Actually Find on Companies House?

The data points that matter for acquisition are: incorporation date, director names and dates of birth, SIC code, and filed accounts. Everything else is secondary.

Incorporation date tells you how long the business has been trading. Director age tells you succession risk. SIC code tells you the industry. Filed accounts give you a proxy for financial health and scale. Companies House advanced search pulls all of this across five million-plus UK company records with no registration, login, or payment required.

How to Use Companies House Advanced Search: Step by Step

Work through this manually the first time. You need to understand what the data actually shows before you think about doing it at scale.

  1. Go to the Advanced Search. Navigate to find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk and click "Advanced company search." No account needed.

  2. Set company type to "Private limited company." You are only interested in LTD companies. Sole traders and LLPs are not acquisition targets using this methodology, so strip them out immediately.

  3. Set status to "Active." You want trading businesses, not dissolved shells. The dissolved date filter exists for a separate purpose: you can search struck-off companies to research market exits or track directors moving between ventures. For acquisition prospecting, active is the only status that matters.

  4. Enter a SIC code for your target sector. For manufacturing, look at codes in the 10000–33999 range. For professional services, 69000–75000. For health and social care, 86000–88990. Use the Companies House SIC code reference list to find the right codes before you search.

  5. Filter by incorporation date. Set "incorporated from" to at least ten years ago. A company incorporated before 2015 with consistent accounts filings is a meaningful signal. Start-ups are not what you are looking for.

  6. Filter by location. Use the registered office postcode or county field to target a geography you can work in. You will be meeting these owners in person. Proximity matters.

  7. Export the results. Advanced search displays up to 10,000 records at once and exports up to 5,000 records to CSV, including addresses, SIC codes, and registration dates.

  8. Click through to individual company records. Once you have a shortlist, open each company page. Go to the "People" tab to find the director's name and date of birth. Check the "Filing history" tab: consistently filed accounts, not late or overdue, signal an organised, solvent business.

  9. Search the director by name. A director name search shows every current and past appointment linked to that individual. It reveals associations with dissolved or struck-off businesses, which is useful context before you make contact.

  10. Log your findings. Build a spreadsheet: company name, company number, SIC code, incorporation date, director name, director age, postcode, next action. That is your pipeline.

What Director Age Signals Tell You

Director age is the single most important data point for identifying motivated sellers. An owner aged 60 or over, no co-directors, no evident succession plan: that is the target profile. Companies House publishes director month and year of birth in every officer record. Right there on the page.

Among the 74,711 verified UK businesses in the ExitLeads database, 52.7% have an oldest director aged 60 or over, and 18.4% are run by a sole director aged 60 or over. That is the classic succession-risk profile for seller-financed acquisitions.

Companies House dissolved 726,735 companies in FYE 2025, the highest number on record and a 9.6% increase on the prior year. Many of those were viable businesses that simply ran out of time. The most cited figure in UK business sales is that roughly 80% of SMEs that try to sell never find a buyer, and that number has been consistent for years. Research from the Federation of Small Businesses suggests only 35% of UK small firms have a formal exit or succession strategy.

Worth sitting with that last number for a moment. Two-thirds of small business owners have no plan at all.

The owner who has run the same business for fourteen years, is approaching 65, and has no named successor is not waiting for a broker. They are waiting for someone to make them an offer.

Which Sectors Show the Highest Succession Risk?

Not all sectors are equal. Businesses best suited to acquisition, those that are asset-rich, cash-generative, with staff who can run the operation, tend to cluster in engineering and manufacturing, trades and construction, business services, professional services, wholesale and trade, and motor trade.

Analysis of 330,914 verified UK acquisition targets in the ExitLeads database shows the average company has been trading for 14.1 years, with an average oldest director age of 60.0. Long trading history plus retirement-age director equals succession risk. When you search Companies House by SIC code in these sectors and filter for pre-2010 incorporations, you are not generating random leads. You are surfacing businesses where the owner is statistically likely to be thinking about what comes next.

A manufacturing business incorporated in 2003 in the East Midlands, run by a sole director born in 1959, with consistently filed accounts and no co-directors, is not a theoretical acquisition target. It is a real conversation waiting to happen.

What to Look For in Filed Accounts

Beyond names and dates, the filing history tab is where the picture gets clearer. It contains free, downloadable PDFs of annual accounts and confirmation statements dating back to 2003.

For acquisition screening, here is what to look for:

  • Consistent filing — accounts filed on time, year after year, suggest a solvent, organised business. Late or missing filings are a red flag.
  • "Micro-entity" or "small company" accounts — most SMEs file abbreviated accounts, which show net assets but not revenue or profit. That is fine at screening stage. You just need to know the business is alive and solvent.
  • Net asset position — even abbreviated accounts show total assets and total liabilities. A positive net asset position with no insolvency filings is the green light to make contact.
  • No undisclosed charges — check the "Charges" tab. Existing secured lending is not disqualifying, but charges that surface for the first time in due diligence can kill a deal. Check them upfront.
  • Confirmation statement filing date — recently filed means active and organised. Overdue may mean dormant or in difficulty.

Deeper financial due diligence, three years of accounts, management accounts, bank statements, comes after Heads of Terms are signed, not at the prospecting stage. At Companies House you are looking for green lights and red flags. See the UK Business Acquisition Due Diligence Checklist for what to ask for once you are in the room.

The Real Limitation: Scale

Here is the honest reality of the manual Companies House approach. It works. Completely free. And extraordinarily time-consuming at scale.

One sector, one region, one SIC code will return hundreds or thousands of records. To identify the subset worth approaching, active, ten-plus years trading, sole director aged 60 or over, no obvious financial distress, you need to click into individual records, read filing histories, note director ages, and build your own spreadsheet row by row. A single meaningful shortlist of 50 warm targets can take several days of solid research. I have done it. It is not quick.

Then there is the contact problem. Companies House gives you the registered office address, which is often an accountant's address, not the business premises. No phone number, no email, no trading address. Finding the actual owner still requires additional work: Google, LinkedIn, local directories, sometimes just turning up.

Within the ExitLeads database of 330,914 verified UK businesses, 14.7% are sole-director businesses and 52.7% have an oldest director aged 60 or over. Identifying that cohort manually from five million Companies House records, then verifying and matching each one with contact information, is not a weekend project.

The manual process is the right starting point. Learn what signals matter and why. Once you understand what you are looking for, the constraint is time, not knowledge.

Companies House Acquisition Target Screening Checklist

Use this before adding any company to your active outreach list.

Green lights (all should be present):

  • Private limited company (LTD), status: Active
  • Incorporated 10+ years ago
  • Sole director or small number of directors with no obvious successor
  • Oldest director aged 55 or over (60 or over is the primary target)
  • Accounts consistently filed on time (no gaps, no overdue filings)
  • Positive net asset position in most recent accounts
  • SIC code matches your target sector
  • No insolvency proceedings, no winding-up petitions

Red flags (walk away or investigate further):

  • Multiple directors with no age concentration (suggests internal succession)
  • Accounts overdue or not filed
  • Recent director resignations without replacements
  • Multiple dissolved company entries in the director's history
  • Charges register showing recent or unusual secured lending

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you find a business owner's contact details on Companies House? Companies House provides director names, dates of birth, and the registered office address. Phone numbers and email addresses are not published. The registered office is often an accountant's or formation agent's address, not the business itself. You will need to cross-reference with the trading address via Google, local directories, or LinkedIn to find direct contact details. For more on this, see How to Contact a Business Owner About Buying Their Company.

Is Companies House data accurate and up to date? Filed information is not verified by Companies House. Directors are required to keep their details current, but discrepancies exist. Always verify key details independently before making an approach.

What is the best SIC code to use when searching for acquisition targets? The right code depends on your target sector. For engineering and light manufacturing, start with SIC codes in the 25000–28999 range. For professional services, try 69100–74990. For trades and construction, look at 41000–43999. Use the official Companies House SIC code list to confirm codes before you search.

How many results can you export from Companies House advanced search? Advanced search displays up to 10,000 records at once, with export limited to 5,000 records per CSV download. If a search returns more than 5,000 results, narrow it by adding tighter date ranges, more specific SIC codes, or a smaller geographic area.

The manual Companies House process described above is exactly how to build an acquisition pipeline from scratch. Free, effective, and it gives you a genuine edge over buyers waiting on broker listings. Once you have run the process a few times and understand what you are looking for, the constraint becomes time, not knowledge. The ExitLeads database applies this same filtering logic, sector, director age, company age, sole director status, across hundreds of thousands of verified UK businesses, so you spend your time talking to owners, not building spreadsheets.