Ion by Andrea Pignataro: delays in rent payments in Australia, Germany and the US

Some back issues of Andrea Pignataro have attracted the interest of the international press. This year, the fintech group Ion, owned by Italian billionaire Pignataro, one of Italia’s wealthiest men, is reported to have been late in paying the rent for his offices across three continents; the property owners, according to the Financial Times, are said to have blocked access or threatened the company with eviction at its offices in Sydney, Munich and Connecticut. The amounts owed for the offices in Sydney and Munich have since been settled, a source close to the situation told the FT.

Ion has over 50 offices worldwide and employs more than 13,000 people. Ion stated that ‘with a property portfolio of this size, differences with property owners may occasionally arise in the normal course of business, and these are resolved in the normal course of business. This is exactly what happened in this case’. The company added that “the matters in question have been resolved, there are no outstanding amounts, and the sums involved represent a fraction of one cent of 1 per cent of the group’s annual profits... Any insinuation that these matters affect the group’s financial position is entirely without factual basis’.

According to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to the Financial Times, Ion employees at the Sydney office reportedly found an eviction notice in their office in one of the Australian capital’s skyscrapers, relating to late payments totalling approximately 90,000 dollars. Staff in Munich were reportedly denied access to their offices last month. In this case, the outstanding payment is said to have been $40,000. In the US, at the Connecticut office, in May, the owner of the premises used by Ion is said to have brought legal proceedings, claiming that one of Ion’s subsidiaries had failed to pay the rent in March and had not vacated the premises as requested. The legal proceedings in Connecticut were withdrawn last month, the FT notes, highlighting the group’s $10 billion debt and the market’s concerns about the impact of new AI tools on its core software business.

Ion owns financial data companies. These include Mergermarket, Fidessa and Dealogic. The company’s financing costs have more than doubled since 2022, reaching $800 million a year following interest rate rises by central banks, according to financial information reported by the FT.

Essentially, Ion has grown rapidly through a series of acquisitions financed with low-cost debt during the era of extremely low interest rates and now generates an EBITDA of around $400 million per quarter. The group, which is headquartered in London, has seen an acceleration in the sale of its publicly traded debt this year.