Title: Tertiary companions to close multiple stars Authors: A. Tokovinin, S. Thomas, M. Sterzik, S. Udry Preliminary results of a survey of nearby solar-type spectroscopic binaries with P<30d for tertiary companions are presented. New observations with adaptive optics and data from the 2MASS sky survey permitted to discover new tertiary components and to sharpen statistical limits on their frequency. We find that only 2/3 of SBs are triple, the remaining are genuine binaries and should have formed by a mechanism distinct from dissipative Kozai cycles.