Billionaire’s financial data group Ion chased by landlords for overdue rent
Group behind Dealogic and Mergermarket made late payments on offices in Sydney, Munich and Connecticut
Billionaire Andrea Pignataro’s financial technology group Ion missed rent payments on offices in three continents this year, prompting landlords to cut off access or threaten the heavily indebted company with eviction.
Employees at Ion’s Sydney office this year arrived at the city’s second-tallest tower to find an eviction notice for late payment of about $90,000, people familiar with the matter said.
Ion’s staff in Munich were denied access to their office for weeks last month after about $40,000 in rent was not paid on time. In Connecticut, the group’s landlord sued in May, alleging that one of Ion’s subsidiaries had failed to pay its rent in March and did not move out of the premises when asked.
The amounts due on the Sydney and Munich sites have now been paid, a person familiar with the situation said, and legal proceedings in Connecticut were withdrawn last month.
Ion’s failure to meet payment obligations on time comes as the group’s $10bn debt burden and questions over the impact of new AI tools on its software business have come under increasing scrutiny from investors.
Ion, which owns financial data companies including Mergermarket, Fidessa and Dealogic, grew rapidly through a series of acquisitions financed by cheap debt during the era of ultra-low interest rates, and now generates about $400mn of earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation each quarter.
That growth has made Pignataro one of Italy’s richest men and one of the largest players in Europe’s market for junk debt.
But a sell-off in Ion’s publicly traded debt has accelerated this year, and Ion’s financing costs have more than doubled since 2022 to about $800mn a year as central banks have raised interest rates, according to financial information seen by the FT.
The price of a $1.5bn bond issued by Ion Platform Investment Group trades at 80 cents on the dollar, down from about 96 cents in mid-January. The price drop means that some of Ion’s debt now comes with a yield of more than 12 per cent.
On top of its publicly traded debt, Ion’s holding company has another $2.5bn of private debt from investors including BlackRock-owned private credit firm HPS.
Ion has more than 50 offices around the world, employing more than 13,000 people. Its flagship site in London overlooks St Paul’s Cathedral, while its Sydney office is located on the 28th floor of the city’s Salesforce Tower, the second-tallest skyscraper in Sydney.
Ion said that “across a real estate footprint of that size, commercial disagreements with landlords arise from time to time in the ordinary course of business, and they are resolved in the ordinary course of business. That is what has happened here.”
It added that “the matters in question have been resolved, no amounts are outstanding, and the sums concerned represent a fraction of one 100th of one per cent of the group’s annual earnings . . . Any suggestion that these matters bear on the group’s financial position is unsupported by the facts.”