41% of business owners in Yorkshire plan to sell their company at some point, new figures show

He said: “What we’re seeing is a mood change since the middle of last year.

"There has been a stream of bad news with the pandemic, inflation and rising interest rates, and a period of significant uncertainty. When you’re unsure of how the next few years are going to go, I think it's more likely that as a business owner, you will just hold on to what you’ve got.

“If I’m looking to sell my business now, I’m more confident than I have been in the last four or five years and I’m selling it within a period of stability where hopefully there isn't going to be anything too unpredictable which disrupts my selling process.

"I think thre was probably a period of around six to nine months where a lot of business owners had put their plans on hold, but you can't do that forever. Right now, as things look like they are stabilising, is the time to raise some investment and go for growth again

In December, YFM’s Entrepreneur Economy Report found that 69 per cent of businesses in Yorkshire and the Humber had experienced growth in their most recent financial year.

The report ranked Leeds as the UK’s tenth best city for business creation.

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Mr Clarke noted that YFM had also seen interest in investment from businesses begin to rise across the country in the final quarter of 2023.

He said: “There was a real slowdown in all investing activity in the middle of last year, but we already saw a bounce back in enquiries for investment at YFM in the fourth quarter of the year. There's a lot of talk about how this is a new year with renewed optimism, but we were already seeing that in Q4 of last year.”

YFM’s report also asked businesses about how they had adopted AI.

It found that 39 per cent of Yorkshire businesses said they had not yet adopted AI, but had looked into how it could benefit their business, while 24 per cent of Yorkshire business owners said that they see AI as a threat.

Despite these figures, Mr Clarke noted: “Most businesses we’re meeting are actually bringing AI into their businesses to help with things like making decisions quicker.

“We’re seeing it right from smaller private sector firms using Chat GPT to write PR campaigns up to public sector companies using AI platforms to predict where they should be putting their budgets.

“We’re even seeing even top level utilities companies adopting AI platforms to understand where their biggest areas of waste water or blockages are going to be, and predict what repairs they will need to do by this time next year.”