Even though Total Specific Solutions (TSS) only belonged to the Constellation family from 2013 to 2020, the company’s history spans almost two decades. Founded, or rather acquired, in 2006 by a family office run by the Dutch Strikwerda family that earned its money in the IT business, TSS was in many ways already Constellation’s European twin before it was acquired: a growthy, decentralized serial acquirer of VMS businesses that uses permanent capital and offers complete autonomy to the acquirees.
By the time Constellation swallowed up TSS, it had grown into the largest VMS company in the Netherlands. To Constellation, it was such a large purchase (€240mn, 3.4x tangible assets, and 2.7x FY2013 net maintenance revenues) and reached so many verticals that it, with its 1.4k employees, formed a new Operating Group within Constellation.
Once TSS got into Constellation’s fold, the M&A machine was fired up. In its 7 years pre-Constellation, TSS had made 7 acquisitions, but under Constellation, it completed 60 of them the following 6 years, turning TSS into a prominent Operating Group. When Constellation therefore announced that TSS would be spun off and that the company would make a large acquisition of the Dutch VMS growth company Topicus.com B.V. in the process, taking the target company name, it drew attention from the geeky investment community. Could Topicus become the next Constellation, repeating the story again on the other side of the Atlantic?