The story
The history of TNS as a market research company began in 1946 with the establishment of National Family Opinion (NFO) in the United States. Since then, various mergers and acquisitions involving large companies from the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific eventually became the Taylor Nelson Sofres group.
Six original companies
The 1960s saw the establishment of the six main companies that today form part of TNS. Starting with NFO in the 1940s, Intersearch in the US in 1960; then AGB in the UK in 1962; Sofres in France in 1963; Frank Small Associates (FSA) in Australia in 1964; Taylor Nelson in the UK in 1965. Over the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, these companies grew significantly as individual businesses.
The 1990s and early years of the new millennium saw consolidation in the industry. In 1991 AGB and Taylor Nelson merged to create Taylor Nelson AGB. In 1992, Sofres acquired Secodip. In 1997, Sofres combined with FSA. In 1997, Sofres acquired Intersearch and then merged with Taylor Nelson AGB, thus creating TNS.
In 1998 Taylor Nelson Sofres acquired Chilton Market Research, followed by CMR in 2000, and the NFO WorldGroup in 2003.
In 2006, a class action lawsuit was filed against TNS alleging that it failed to disclose major financial information in a registration statement associated with the company's secondary offering.
The TNS Group continues to grow, mainly by acquiring small research companies to strengthen its position in markets in which it already has a presence. For example, in December 2007, TNS acquired Landis Strategy & Innovation in the United States, a specialist research-based consultancy. In the same month, TNS announced that it had reached agreement to increase its ownership of LatinPanel Holdings from 33.3% to 100%. TNS was formerly a joint venture partner with the NPD Group and the IBOPE Group in this continuous consumer panel business serving Latin America operating in 15 countries in Latin America, and covering 96% of the region’s GDP, providing local and international clients with access to a household research panel across the packaged groceries, toiletries and cosmetics, fresh foods and textile retail markets.
In early March 2008, TNS announced the merging of its North American operating units TNS Media Intelligence, TNS Media Research with the recently acquired firms Compete and Cymfony to create TNS Media Group.
On 29 April 2008 TNS announced that it was in talks to merge with German market research company GfK. The announcement was followed in May by two conditional offers from WPP to buy TNS for a combination of cash and shares, both of which were rejected by TNS’s board. The hostile WPP bid led to GfK and TNS abandoning their merger plans. GfK sought without success to find backing for a rival offer, leaving WPP’s hostile bid as the only one on the table. On 9 October 2008 WPP declared that its latest bid had been successful and that it was buying TNS for $1.93bn.
Read the full text
TNS was bought by WPP's Kantar Group. Many Kantar subsidiary companies underwent restructuring and rebranding.
In 2013, TNS acquired Sinotrust Market Research, a leading market research and consulting company in China.
On 8 September 2016, TNS was rebranded as Kantar TNS.
On 2 April 2019, Kantar announced that it was retiring the names of its brands (including Kantar TNS) and consolidating all services and offerings under the Kantar brand name.
From Wikipedia’s article on Kantar TNS, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4