The best businesses to buy aren't for sale yet
Seller Radar screens the UK Companies House register for owner-managed businesses showing succession pressure — director age and tenure, ownership concentration, board structure, filing movement — and delivers a ranked, researched target list against your own criteria.
Built on the UK public register · Every figure traceable to its source · No success fee
Off-market target teaser · Record 04
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both measures
10,000+
Register candidates screened
per search, before scoring
21
Signals tested per company
succession, trigger, financial, market
75%
Matched to a confirmed website
measured across 397 screened companies
2
Independent scores per record
both must clear a band
How it works
From a brief to a ranked target list
A research engagement, not a subscription to a tool. You describe what you want to buy; we do the screening and hand you the file.
You set the brief
Sector, size, region, and the ownership structure you want — or want to avoid — in plain English. No SIC codes required; we map them and confirm the mapping with you before anything runs.
The register is screened
Every candidate is scored on two independent axes: Exit Timing and Business Quality. Both must clear a band. A strong score on one never compensates for a weak score on the other.
You receive the list
A teaser PDF of the strongest records, plus a full spreadsheet: named decision-maker, contact route where one exists, diligence questions drawn from that company's own filings, and a drafted approach letter in your name.
What's on every record
Enough to decide whether to approach
Each record is built to answer one question: is this company worth your time, and what would you say to the owner?
Two-axis scoring, thresholds published
Exit Timing and Business Quality are scored separately, and the band each must clear is stated in the file. You can see why a company ranked where it did, signal by signal, with every point linked to the filing it came from.
Ownership verified through every layer
We walk the ownership chain to the top. Where a chain cannot be resolved, the record says so — an unresolvable layer is never quietly reported as 'no fund involved'.
Revenue, split three ways
Most small UK companies file no profit and loss account. So revenue appears as three separate things: the filing regime (fact), the statutory bracket it implies (deduction), and an estimate (labelled as an estimate, always).
Dated register events
A satisfied charge, a share buyback, a director resigning without a replacement — counted as dated economic events, not as a list of filings. Recent events carry more weight than old ones.
Diligence questions from its own filings
Each record carries questions specific to that company, drawn from what it has actually filed — the things you would want answered before making an approach.
A drafted approach letter, in your name
Written for that company and its situation, for you to edit and send yourself. We never send it, and we never contact anyone on the list.
Who it's for
Built for people buying a business, not advising on one
If you are an advisor looking for buyers instead, that is our other product.
Self-funded searchers
You have one shot and limited time. A ranked list of owner-managed businesses in your sector beats another month of cold directory trawling.
Search funds & ETA operators
Proprietary deal flow your investors can see the reasoning behind — every score evidenced against the filings it came from.
Family offices & independent sponsors
Off-market origination without adding an analyst. Screen a sector properly before committing capital or a mandate to it.
Buy-and-build platforms
Find add-ons around an existing platform: same sector, right size, owner-managed, and no fund already on the cap table.
What we will not do
The limits are printed in the file
A research product is only worth anything if you can trust the parts that say “we don't know”. Every list we deliver states its own limits, in the file, next to the findings.
An estimate is never printed as a filed figure
Small UK companies file no profit and loss account. Where turnover has not been filed, you get the filing regime, the statutory bracket it implies, and an estimate — each labelled as what it is. The file refuses to build if an estimate is ever presented as a filed fact.
A gap appears as a gap, not as a finding
Every lookup we run is counted, and the failures are reported with the provider and the error. If we could not find a website, a phone line or an email for a company, the record says we looked and did not find one — it never quietly reads as though nothing was there.
A list that fails its own quality bar is not sent
Before anything is rendered, a fixed set of checks runs against the finished research — how many records carry a confirmed website, whether the count you asked for was actually met. If a check fails, the file does not build. Where we judge an exception warranted, the waived check is printed in the paid file's own limits and recorded in the run's log with the threshold and the value we actually found: a gate that was waved through is never silent.
Every near-miss is named, with the reason
Companies that scored well but were excluded are listed with the fact that disqualified them — the wrong size, a corporate shareholder, a filing that changed the picture. You can see what the screen threw away, and disagree with it.
A signal is not an intention
These companies show no evident internal succession route. That is a structural observation drawn from public filings — nothing more. It is not a statement that the owner wants to sell, has been approached, or knows that any list exists.
Pricing
A flat fee for a delivered list
Research engagements, priced by the size of the list. Not a subscription to software, and not a percentage of anything you buy.
One-off list
25 companies
£750 one-off
One sector, one region, one thesis.
- Teaser PDF of the strongest records
- Full spreadsheet with every scored signal
- The named decision-maker, and separately the best contact route we could confirm — each labelled with who it actually reaches
- Diligence questions drawn from each company's filings
- A drafted approach letter per record, in your name
One-off list
60 companies
£900 one-off
A sector screened properly, or several regions at once.
- Everything in the 25-company list
- Wider register sweep across more SIC codes or regions
- Near-miss exclusion log, with the disqualifying fact
- Sector concentration and ownership-structure summary
Ongoing origination
50 prospects a month
£600 per month
Cancel anytime. No minimum term.
- 50 newly researched prospects each month, ranked with evidence
- Register events on companies already on your list
- Re-scored records where the filings changed
- De-duplicated against everything already delivered to you
Flat fee. No success fee, no percentage of a deal, ever.
FAQ
What buyers ask first
The questions searchers and sponsors put to us before commissioning a list.
What counts as a succession signal?+
Structural facts from the public register that together suggest no evident internal succession route: the age band and tenure of the lead director, whether any active director is under 50, how concentrated ownership is across the persons with significant control, whether a successor has ever been appointed, and dated register movement such as a share buyback, a satisfied charge, or a director resigning without a replacement. Each signal is scored separately and linked to the filing it came from.
Where does the data come from?+
The UK Companies House register — company filings, officers, persons with significant control, charges, and accounts — the decision-maker's other companies on that same register, The Gazette's published corporate-insolvency notices (including solvent members' voluntary liquidations of those other companies), sector registers where one exists for the sector you are screening, the company's own website and its archived history, published news that names the company, and — where one exists — a public business-transfer listing page. It is public information, used as published. We do not buy contact lists or scrape social networks.
Why is there no EBITDA on the records?+
Because most owner-managed UK companies do not file one. Small companies file abridged or filleted accounts with no profit and loss account, so an EBITDA figure would be a guess presented as a fact. Instead you get the filing regime, the statutory turnover bracket that regime implies, and a labelled estimate — and net assets and employee numbers where those are filed.
Does the owner know they are on a list?+
No. Nothing is sent to any company on the list by us — Seller Radar produces a drafted approach letter for you to edit and send yourself, in your own name, at your own timing. Screening is done entirely from published filings.
How do you make sure two buyers don't get the same company?+
Every company delivered to a client is recorded against that engagement and excluded from subsequent lists for other clients in the same sector and region. The ongoing origination service is also de-duplicated against everything already delivered to you, so you never pay twice for the same record.
Which countries do you cover?+
The United Kingdom only. The screening is built specifically around Companies House filings and UK statutory accounting thresholds, and it would not be honest to apply the same model to another register.
What does ongoing origination include?+
50 newly researched prospects each month at £600 per month, plus dated register events on companies already on your list and re-scored records where a new filing changed the picture. It is delivered in the same format as a one-off list and de-duplicated against everything you already have. Cancel anytime — there is no minimum term.
Tell us what you want to buy
Send us the sector, size and region you are looking at. We will come back with a sample record and what a list against those criteria would look like.
Request a sample listNo account, no trial, no card — research engagements are agreed by email.