Taylor Nelson Sofres
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| Wholly owned subsidiary | |
| Industry | Marketing |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Headquarters | London, England, UK |
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Key people
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| Services | Market research |
| Revenue | £1,068 million (2007) |
 £102.7 million (2007)
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| Profit |
£58.5 million (2007)
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| Owner | Kantar Group (a division of the WPP Group) |
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Number of employees
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15,270 (2007) |
| Website | www.tnsglobal.com |
Kantar TNS (formerly known as Taylor Nelson Sofres) is a market research and market information group. Formerly listed on the and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, the firm was acquired by WPP Group in October 2008 for 1.6 billion pounds.
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.
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 1991 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.
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