This is not just a Virginia problem.
Harbor tracks ownership drain in Virginia, where 77-82% of companies that sell go to out-of-state buyers. So we pulled ten more states to check. Every one of them loses at least three of every four. Virginia ranks second best.
Eleven states. One direction.
Ranked by out-of-state acquisition rate, 2010 through July 2026. The best performer in the panel keeps one selling company in four. The worst keeps one in twenty-seven.
Sixteen years. No mean reversion.
Pooled across the panel, the out-of-state share has never left the high seventies to low eighties. It is drifting up, not down: the last four full years averaged 83.6% against 80.8% for the prior twelve. Nine of the eleven states ran above their own long-run average in 2022 through 2025.
Everyone drains to the same places.
Five states absorb 45% of every out-of-state domestic deal in the panel: California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois. Another 2,627 deals, one in ten, leave the country entirely. Canada and the United Kingdom lead.
| Canada | 623 |
| United Kingdom | 524 |
| France | 203 |
| Germany | 143 |
| Ireland | 133 |
| Sweden | 121 |
Even the buyers are sellers.
Within the panel, only New York and Illinois buy more companies from the other ten states than they lose to them. It does not protect them. New York still loses 74.8% of its own sellers. Illinois loses 79.4%. Ownership does not pool anywhere in the panel. It passes through.
NET POSITION COUNTS ONLY DEALS BETWEEN THE ELEVEN PANEL STATES: 6,162 OF THE 17,422 OUT-OF-STATE DOMESTIC DEALS. FLOWS TO THE OTHER THIRTY-NINE STATES AND ABROAD ARE NOT NETTED HERE.
The roll-up is national.
72.9% of all deals in the panel are add-on acquisitions: companies absorbed into someone else's platform. No state falls below 68%. This is not local firms merging with local firms. It is a conveyor.
Every state has the drain. Almost none has an answer. Harbor holds Virginia operating businesses permanently.
No fund clock. No exit timeline. No out-of-state extraction. Virginia sits near the top of this panel and still loses 77% of its selling companies. The other ten lose more. The model that keeps ownership local is proven and portable. So far it exists in one state.