Einar H. Dyvik
Research expert covering Nordics and global data for society, economy, and politics
Business enterprises in the UK - Statistics & Facts
Approximately 5.5 million private businesses, were in operation in the United Kingdom in 2024, over two million more than there were in the year 2000, but almost half a million fewer than in 2020. Taken as whole, the private sector employs around 27.3 million people and had a combined turnover of over 5.27 trillion British pounds. London was the UK region with the largest number of businesses, at 982,905, and was also the city with the highest start-up rate, at 92.8 start-ups per 10,000 population in 2021. Among UK-based companies, Shell had, by some distance, the highest revenue at 289.7 billion US dollars, with BP and HSBC Holdings having the second and third-highest revenues respectively. In the same year, Compass Group employed an estimated 500,000 people worldwide, the highest among UK-based business enterprises.
