Australia's 60,000 Business Succession Crisis: What It Means for Owners Thinking About Selling

By Nicholas Ryan · Succession Advisory

There are roughly 162,000 privately held Australian businesses turning over between $2 million and $100 million a year. More than two-thirds are owned by someone of retirement age. And of those, two-thirds have no succession plan.

That's 60,000 businesses — built over decades, employing thousands of Australians — with no clear path forward for when the owner is ready to stop.

The Mathematics of the Problem

The Australian Business Growth Fund identified the scale of the challenge clearly: over two-thirds of Australia's privately held mid-market businesses are owned by someone of retirement age. And when surveyed, another two-thirds of those owners admitted they had no formal succession plan in place.

As Pete Seligman, an experienced acquirer who runs ETA Investor, put it: "If we don't provide a new owner operator for those businesses, a vast majority of them will just have to shut their doors — because there's no other appropriate buyer for those particular businesses in those circumstances."

Shut their doors. Not sold. Not transferred. Just closed, with the value destroyed.

That's the default outcome for a business with no succession plan and a tired owner. Not a dramatic collapse — just a gradual wind-down, because no one was ready.

Why the Buyer Market Isn't Making This Easy

You might assume that 60,000 businesses without plans creates a seller's market. The reality is more complicated.

William Buck's 2026 Dealmaking Insights report found that Australian M&A deal volume hit a 10-year low in 2025, with just 720 completed transactions. Of those, 74% were deals under $50 million — the segment where most of these 60,000 businesses sit.

That's a thin market. And it's getting more demanding, not less:

Buyers are more selective, with more information and tighter capital
Due diligence is deeper and takes longer
Deal structures are more complex, with more conditions and earnouts
30% of 2025 deals involved foreign buyers — who are often more sophisticated negotiators than local trade buyers

The businesses that sold did so because they were prepared. The ones that didn't — often because they weren't.

What "No Plan" Actually Looks Like

Most owners without a succession plan don't think of themselves as planning to close. They think:

"I'll sell when I'm ready."
"My kids might take it over."
"There's always a buyer for a good business."
"I've still got a few good years left."

These aren't wrong instincts. They're just incomplete plans.

"When I'm ready" is not a plan. It's a hope. And the experience of businesses that have tried to sell without preparation is remarkably consistent: it takes longer, costs more, attracts lower offers, and often falls over in due diligence.

The businesses in the 60,000 that find a buyer — and close at a price that actually reflects what they've built — are the ones where the owner started planning 18 to 36 months before they needed to act.

What Preparation Actually Involves

Succession preparation isn't a single event. It's a series of decisions that change the risk profile of your business from a buyer's perspective:

1. Financial clarity

Three years of clean, reconciled financials. Add-backs that are documented and defensible. Revenue by customer, by channel, by repeat vs. new. If your numbers need an explanation every time someone looks at them, that's a problem for a sale process.

2. Owner dependence, reduced

If you are the business — the relationships, the knowledge, the decision-making — a buyer is taking on enormous key-person risk. That risk gets priced in, usually as a lower multiple or a larger earnout. The businesses that attract the cleanest deals are the ones where the owner could leave for four weeks and nothing would break. We've written about this in detail here.

3. Legal and structural tidiness

Leases with renewal options. Employment contracts signed. IP owned by the right entity. No outstanding disputes. These aren't complicated issues — but they become complicated if you discover them mid-due-diligence with a buyer waiting.

4. A clear narrative

Buyers are buying a future, not just a past. What's the growth story? Why is this business better positioned today than three years ago? If you can't answer that, a sophisticated buyer will fill in the gaps themselves — usually conservatively.

The Time Pressure Is Real

The 60,000 number is a snapshot. It's also a wave — because baby boomer business owners are all facing the same clock at roughly the same time.

As more of those 60,000 owners decide to act, the buyer pool doesn't grow at the same rate. The businesses that go to market prepared, with clean financials and a clear story, will attract competitive interest. The ones that go to market because they have to — tired, under-prepared, with a deadline — will find a thinner pool and a harder negotiation.

The window for getting full value is probably shorter than most owners think. And the preparation required takes longer than most owners plan for.

Where to Start

The most useful first step isn't hiring a broker. It's getting an honest picture of what your business is actually worth, and what's holding the number back.

That means understanding the multiples that apply to your industry, what add-backs are legitimate, and where the risk flags are that a buyer will find in due diligence — before they find them.

Our free valuation assessment gives you that picture in plain English — the methodology, the range, and the specific factors in your business that will drive the final number up or down.

If you're one of Australia's 60,000, the question isn't whether to plan. It's how much runway you have left to do it properly.