CREATE
Creating Businesses, Creating Employers
Frontier Report
KEEP
Keeping Value in Wales
Ownership, succession and indigenous productive capacity
Business succession and successful exits should leave an economy with more capability: experienced people, viable firms, knowledge, relationships and investment.
The proposition
Retain or recycle productive capability.
Keeping value does not mean preventing business sales or insisting on one ownership model. KEEP considers what happens to jobs, management, technical knowledge and capital when founders retire or firms change hands. It argues for commercially appropriate succession routes and better ways to reconnect experienced founders and capital with new enterprise.
What the publication argues
01
Make succession a normal stage of business development rather than a last-minute problem.
02
Choose ownership and finance routes for commercial fit, without privileging one model.
03
Connect successful exits to new investment, businesses and experienced leadership.
Evidence and examples
The report draws on Welsh succession evidence and research on entrepreneurial recycling following acquisitions in Scotland. It treats employee ownership as one option within a wider set of legitimate ownership routes.
The full publication sets out the evidence, qualifications, recommendations and source references.
Citing this publication
Husain, S. (2026). KEEP — Keeping Value in Wales. Frontier Report, September.
Read the series
The Framework Briefing introduces the argument; the Reports examine each part in depth.
Discuss the implications for your organisation
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