Who’s Buying UK SMEs? What 2025’s busiest acquirers tell us about the 2026 market

Yesterday, Kathryn Stevenson of MarktoMarket, ran through the most acquisitive buyers of UK companies in 2025 - who bought, what they bought, and the themes behind those moves. We’ve taken those insights and translated them into what UK SME owners actually care about:

• Who is really buying businesses like mine?
• What are they paying attention to in due diligence?
• What does last year’s buyer behaviour suggest for 2026 if I’m considering a sale, a bolt-on, or funding?

This is that 2025 look-back, with 2026's spectacles on.

The 2025 buyer mix: trade dominates the volume, but Private Equity shapes expectations

One of the most useful datapoints from the 2025 review is the buyer “mix”:

• Trade buyers made up the lion’s share of transactions by volume (it’s a big market; there are lots of corporates buying smaller competitors, suppliers, and capability).
• Private equity buyers were a smaller proportion overall.
• PE-backed platforms (portfolio companies doing buy-and-build) sat in the middle—often fewer in number than trade buyers, but hugely influential.
• Listed buyers were present too, typically in sectors where public companies run acquisition programmes.

That dynamic matters because even when trade buyers are most of the activity by count, PE and PE-backed platforms often set the “rules of the game”: speed, process discipline, integration expectations, and (in certain sectors) what “normal” pricing looks like.

Practical takeaway for 2026: even if you expect a trade buyer to be your eventual acquirer, it’s increasingly common that they’re competing in a market shaped by sponsor-backed behaviour. That’s why “we’ll tidy it up during due diligence” is a risky plan. It’s a bit like starting your training on the morning of the marathon. Buyers don’t just reward growth; they reward preparation.

The most acquisitive buyers in 2025: what they have in common

Rather than turning this into a corporate finance version of the football transfer window (tempting, but we’ll behave), the most useful thing for owners is what the busiest buyers typically share.

A) platform-and-add-on strategy (the “buy and build” machine)

The most acquisitive groups are rarely improvising. They usually have:

• a core platform business,
• a defined acquisition thesis (what they buy, where, and why),
• and an integration plan they’ve rehearsed repeatedly.

They aren’t “opportunistic” in the way SMEs often mean it. They’re systematic.

B) They like fragmented markets

If an industry has hundreds (or thousands) of small operators—especially owner-managed ones—it’s ripe for consolidation. Buyers can improve returns by:

• centralising admin,
• standardising pricing,
• tightening working capital,
• cross-selling,
• and professionalising sales.

C) They love repeatability

The most attractive targets often have repeat demand. That doesn’t have to mean SaaS-style subscription contracts. It can also be:

• annual compliance cycles,
• long-term service contracts,
• multi-year frameworks,
• maintenance schedules,
• or customer relationships with high switching costs.

Repeatability is just another way of saying: the buyer can underwrite the future with confidence.

D) They’re comfortable doing lots of smaller deals

Many consolidators are perfectly happy doing repeated add-ons—provided they can integrate them smoothly.

The implication for sellers: you may not be the centre of their universe (even if you are, naturally, the centre of yours). So the way you “win” is by being easy to buy: clean data, clean contracts, credible EBITDA, clear story.

Where consolidation has been hottest (and why it matters for 2026)

From the 2025 buyer activity Kathryn highlighted, a handful of sector themes stood out—many of which are likely to remain active in 2026.

Theme 1: Professional services roll-ups (accountancy, wealth, advisory, consultancy)

These markets suit buy-and-build because they can offer:

• sticky client relationships,
• predictable cash generation,
• cross-sell opportunities,
• and scope to centralise support functions.

The nuance: buyers pay more when the revenue is not purely “people = revenue”. They look for:

• retainer-heavy income,
• a strong second line of management,
• a consistent lead generation engine,
• and documented delivery processes.

If your pitch relies on “I know everyone in the industry”, buyers will smile politely… and then ask what happens if you fancy a long weekend.

Theme 2: Testing, inspection, certification, compliance and safety

These businesses attract buyers because:

• regulation and compliance create recurring work,
• customers often prefer trusted providers (reputational risk matters),
• and service delivery can be standardised.

Buyers tend to push hard on:

• accreditation and quality control,
• defensible customer relationships,
• and whether delivery is “system-driven” rather than hero-driven.

Theme 3: Insurance and financial services distribution

This remains active where there’s a strong “book” of business, recurring commissions, and retention. Buyers are typically very focused on:

• churn/retention,
• the reliance on specific relationship holders,
• and concentration risk (customers, insurers, introducers).

Theme 4: Nurseries and care-related services — scale as a survival advantage

Nursery consolidation was a notable theme in the 2025 discussion. It’s a sector where the economics of scale can matter a lot because the environment is demanding:

• staffing pressure,
• regulatory compliance burden,
• and cost increases that larger groups can absorb more easily than single-site operators.

An interesting nuance from the 2025 review: deal volumes have been strong, but the share of PE-backed deals doesn’t necessarily rise in line, suggesting that consolidation is also being driven by non-sponsor players—independents combining for scale, not just PE-backed platforms.

2026 implication: expect continued activity, but don’t assume every transaction will be sponsor-led.

Theme 5: IT services / MSPs / cyber

Buyers like MSPs because:

• recurring support contracts,
• embedded customer relationships,
• and cross-sell potential (cloud, telecoms, security, apps).

They’ll dig into:

• contract quality (term, renewal, break clauses),
• gross margin by service line,
• and the split of recurring vs project income.

Theme 6: HVAC / air conditioning / refrigeration / building services

International buyers have been building positions in this space, and the logic is familiar:

• maintenance cycles create repeat work,
• compliance and safety drive demand,
• and there’s a steady pipeline of owner-managed firms (often with founders thinking about succession).

In the 2025 review, one emerging buyer example was a consolidator entering the UK and Ireland and targeting owner-managed HVAC/refrigeration firms across multiple acquisitions—often with mid-market revenue profiles and clearly identifiable “repeat service” characteristics.

2026 implication: if you’re in service-led building engineering, the “strategic buyer universe” may be larger than you think—especially once international platforms enter the UK with a clear acquisition programme.

What these buyers pay for (and what they discount)

Valuation in the SME market is rarely just “a sector multiple”. It’s closer to a:

multiple of earnings × confidence in future earnings

Buyers typically pay for:

• predictable earnings (recurring or repeatable revenue)
• operational resilience (not founder-dependent)
• scalability (systems, process, management depth)
• clean financials (credible EBITDA, normalised properly)
• strategic fit (capability, geography, cross-sell)

Buyers discount for:

• client concentration (one client = one heart attack in due diligence)
• weak gross margin discipline (especially if pricing is “historical and polite”)
• undocumented processes (everything lives in people’s heads)
• messy working capital (surprise cash needs post-completion)
• unclear IP / contracts / compliance (uncertainty slows deals and shifts terms)

A simple way to think about improving value in 2026 isn’t “how do we argue for a higher multiple?” It’s: how do we reduce perceived risk? Less risk = more confidence = better pricing and terms.

If you want to sell: how to position for the buyers who are actually buying in 2026

The busiest acquirers in 2025 weren’t buying “nice little businesses”. They were buying platform pieces: capability, client bases, geography, teams, compliance credentials, recurring revenue, and scalable operations.

If a sale is on your horizon (12–36 months), there are a few levers that consistently matter.

Step 1: Build a buyer-ready story (not just a founder story)

A buyer story answers:

• why your revenue is defensible,
• why margins are sustainable,
• how growth happens without heroic effort,
• and what the buyer can do with the business next.

Founders often underestimate how much value sits in “institutionalising” what they do naturally: documented sales process, consistent reporting, delivery playbooks, and a management structure that doesn’t collapse if the founder is out of action.

Step 2: De-risk the top three diligence questions

In most SME deals, diligence comes back to three areas:

1. Revenue quality – who pays you, why, and how likely they are to keep paying
2. Margin reality – what profit is repeatable once you strip out owner-specific items
3. Operational independence – what breaks if the owner steps back

If the answers are clear, your deal runs faster and stronger. If they’re vague, terms get tougher.

Step 3: Make integration easy (because buyers are doing this repeatedly)

Acquisitive buyers care about integration because they’re doing it again next month. If you can show:

• clean contracts and customer records,
• reliable KPIs and management reporting,
• documented delivery processes,
• and a capable second line,

you become “easy to buy”.

And “easy to buy” is valuable.

Step 4: Run a process that creates competitive tension

The best way to improve an outcome is often not negotiating harder. It’s having more than one credible buyer at the table.

That requires:

• strong materials (IM, financial model, diligence pack),
• tight buyer targeting,
• and a structured timetable.

If you want to buy: what 2025’s acquisitive players are teaching the market

If you’re considering your own acquisition strategy, the lesson from the most acquisitive buyers is that volume comes from:

• a clear thesis,
• repeatable sourcing,
• disciplined diligence,
• and real integration capacity.

The most common failure point in SME buy-and-build isn’t finding targets. It’s integration bandwidth and governance: KPIs, management oversight, and funding headroom.

If you’re thinking “we’ll just do one acquisition and see how it goes”, that’s fine—but if your ambition is repeated acquisitions, you need to plan like a consolidator:

• a 24–36 month roadmap,
• a post-merger integration playbook,
• and a funding structure that supports a sequence, not a single event.

Self-test: five questions to ask about your business

1. If I stepped back for 90 days, what revenue or delivery would genuinely be at risk—and why?
2. How much of our revenue is truly repeatable (contracted, renewal-driven, compliance-driven, or habitual)?
3. If a buyer reviewed our last 24 months of financials, what would they challenge first: margins, customer conncentration, or working capital?
4. Do we have documented processes (sales, delivery, finance, compliance) that make the business easy to integrate—or does everything still rely on “how we’ve always done it”?
5. Who are the 10 most logical buyers for us in 2026–2028 (trade, PE-backed platforms, international entrants)—and what would we need to change to become their ‘obvious’ target?

A final thought (and a practical next step)

The most acquisitive buyers of 2025 have given us a pretty clear signal for 2026: buyers will continue to reward predictability, resilience, and scaleable operations—and they’ll keep consolidating fragmented sectors where those traits can be built through acquisition.

Whether you want to sell in the next few years or you’re planning to acquire, the winners tend to be the businesses that prepare early and run a process, not the ones that “see what offers come in”.

If you’d like, Branta can help you:

• map the most likely buyers for your business,
• estimate value ranges based on your revenue quality and risk profile,
• and build a plan to improve value before going to market.

If you want a confidential conversation about your options—sell, buy, raise funding, or just get the business “buyer-ready”—get in touch with Branta.