Companies House records kyu holding more than half of Public Digital's parent company

Kyu Investment UK Limited has been recorded at Companies House since April 2023 as holding more than 50% but less than 75% of the shares and voting rights in Public Digital Holdings Limited, the parent of the London consultancy Public Digital, along with the right to appoint or remove directors.

Public Digital’s own announcement of the deal, published on its site on 13 October 2020 under the byline of Ben Terrett, said something different at the time: “kyu has taken a minority stake in Public Digital, leaving the majority in the hands of the founders.” That post is still online and has not been updated. Public Digital has published no statement since about any change in the size of the stake.

What the two registers say

Public Digital Limited, company number 09819399, was incorporated on 12 October 2015. Michael Thomas Bracken, Thomas William Frederick Loosemore and Benjamin John Terrett were appointed directors on the day of incorporation, alongside Mark Russell Davies, who resigned in February 2017. All three of the remaining founders are still directors.

Public Digital Holdings Limited, company number 10993674, was incorporated on 3 October 2017 and is registered as holding 75% or more of the operating company. Bracken, Loosemore and Terrett were each entered on the holding company’s register from 5 February 2018 as owning between 25% and 50% of the shares and voting rights, with the right to appoint or remove directors. Each of those three entries records the same cessation date: 10 September 2020, about a month before the kyu announcement.

The kyu entry was notified on 5 April 2023. It is the only active person with significant control of the holding company.

There is an ordinary explanation, and it should be stated plainly: a shareholding can be increased after it is first taken. The register records the position notified in April 2023, two and a half years after the 2020 announcement, and a minority stake bought in 2020 could have been added to at any point in between. Nothing on the register dates the change, and neither company has published an announcement of one. What the public record now shows is a majority holding, which is not what the 2020 post describes, and the post remains online unamended.

The same name also appears on the operating company’s register, notified on 5 April 2023 in the same terms and recorded as ceasing on 5 February 2024. Neither company has published an explanation of that entry or its removal. Under the persons with significant control regime a company generally registers the entity immediately above it rather than every owner further up a chain, which is consistent with the holding company’s entry remaining live while the operating company’s shows Public Digital Holdings Limited instead.

The chain stops there. Kyu Investment UK Limited, company number 09596266, was incorporated on 18 May 2015 and is registered at Herbal House, 8 Back Hill, London EC1R 5EN. Its own register carries a statement, dated 18 May 2017, that the company knows or has reasonable cause to believe there is no registrable person or registrable relevant legal entity in relation to it. In other words, the UK register names no ultimate owner.

kyu’s own site describes the collective as a network of 24 companies in strategy, design, marketing services and organisational transformation, and says each member firm operates independently with its own leadership and brand. The site carries the name Hakuhodo DY Holdings at the foot of the page without setting out the ownership relationship. Public Digital’s site carries the line “A member of the kyu Collective”.

A recapitalisation in December

The holding company also reorganised its share capital last winter. It filed a change of share class name on 2 December 2025 and a variation of the rights attached to shares on the same day, followed on 4 December by resolutions including a share rights variation and a new 38-page set of articles of association. What that machinery does is covered in our explainer on UK cap tables, and the way ownership moves without a sale is set out in our piece on secondary share sales.

Four directors have left the holding company in a year. Andrea Clare Davies ceased on 11 August 2025, Adam John Hughes on 1 December 2025, Andrew Thomas Morrow on 31 March 2026 after less than eight months in post, and Timothy Stephen Brooks on 31 May 2026. Emma Gawen was appointed on 11 August 2025.

Group accounts for the year to 31 December 2025 were filed on 14 August 2026 and are available to download free from the register. Public Digital does not publish revenue or headcount figures on its own website.

Why it matters

Public Digital is one of the best known British firms selling digital reform to government, and its chief executive argues in public for spending less with the incumbents. Terrett, who the company’s site says was Director of Design at the Government Digital Service from 2011 to 2015 and is one of Public Digital’s four founders, wrote on the firm’s blog in January 2025 that a new government digital centre “should be an investment in a more capable state rather than bonuses for Big IT consultants”.

The procurement machinery around that argument has since changed. The Cabinet Office’s own collection page, last updated on 14 May 2026, states that most Cabinet Office spend controls ceased as a requirement from 1 April 2026 as part of changes to the spending control and accountability framework, with the advertising, marketing and communications control the exception.

For founders selling advisory or delivery work to the public sector, the register is the cheapest due diligence there is, and it does not always match the announcement. What buyers look for in the other direction is set out in our guide to due diligence in a UK acquisition.