For journalists and researchers: UK company statistics you can cite
Headline figures (October 2026)
| Finding | Figure | Source page |
|---|---|---|
| Active companies reporting negative net assets in their latest accounts | 18.8% (about 672,000) | Negative net assets study |
| Accounts with negative net assets, financial years ending 2025 | 18.7%, up from 15.2% for 2018 | Negative net assets study |
| Real estate companies with negative net assets | 25.4% for 2025 year ends, 17% for 2014 | Real estate benchmarks |
| Accounts filed in the month the deadline falls in | 44.9% (financial years ending 2024) | When companies file |
| Median cash balance of an active company | £10,127; only 35.3% hold enough cash to cover creditors due within a year | Cash by sector |
| Active companies with overdue accounts | 93,785 (1.8%) | Overdue accounts |
| Live companies incorporated in 2025 | 715,974, against 471,944 from 2024 | Survival by incorporation year |
Industry benchmarks for all 21 SIC sections and their divisions are on UK industry statistics, each with a CSV.
How to cite
Use the page title, our name and a link. For example: "according to an analysis of Companies House accounts by UK Company Data". Full form: UK Company Data (2026). How many UK companies have negative net assets? Global Mindset Marketing Ltd. https://data.globalmindsetmarketing.co.uk/data/uk-companies-negative-net-assets
Our statistics, tables and charts are licensed under CC BY 4.0. The underlying Companies House data is Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Aggregates are also available as an open dataset on Hugging Face: devladpopov/uk-company-statistics.
What our data can and cannot say
The figures describe what companies file at Companies House, not what happens inside them. Three limits matter for reporting:
- Negative net assets is not insolvency. It is a book value measure; many owner-managed companies show net liabilities because of loans from their own directors.
- Paper and PDF filers are missing from financial figures. Our balance sheet numbers come from machine-readable iXBRL accounts, which cover about 70% of active companies and most small ones, but not many large groups.
- The register lists live companies only. Counts by incorporation year are survivors; where we use dissolved companies (for example in yearly trends) we say so.
Method details for every figure: methodology.
Custom analysis and contact
We can run cuts that are not published: a sector in a region, a postcode area, a company age band, a run of years. Email info@globalmindsetmarketing.co.uk with the question and your deadline. We answer press requests the same working day where we can.
Author and analyst: Vladislav Popov, who built the dataset and the iXBRL parser. UK Company Data is operated by Global Mindset Marketing Ltd, company 15738438, Manchester.
FAQ
Can I use your charts in an article?
Yes. Charts and tables on our data pages are CC BY 4.0: reuse them with a credit to UK Company Data and a link to the source page. If you need a high-resolution version or a different cut, email us.
How up to date are the figures?
Register-based figures use the monthly Companies House snapshot (currently 1 October 2026). Financial figures use every iXBRL account we have parsed up to mid-October 2026. Each page states its snapshot date.
Do you publish data on individual companies?
Our company pages show what is on the public register and in filed accounts for one company at a time. Our studies only publish aggregates and never single out small companies.
Check any UK company in seconds. Register details and the latest balance sheet figures for 5.6 million companies, free. Full financial history since 2008 as a one-off pack or through the API.
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