A ndrea Pignataro is an Italian financier and the founder of ION Investment Group, a secretive and highly acquisitive financial software and data company. A former bond trader at Salomon Brothers, Pignataro has built his empire largely outside of the public eye. He founded ION in 1999 with the goal of providing technology to automate trading and workflow for financial institutions, traders, and corporations.

Through a relentless series of leveraged buyouts, Pignataro has consolidated a huge swath of the financial technology landscape. ION has acquired dozens of companies, including major players like Dealogic and Acuris, which provide data and software for capital markets. His strategy involves buying established but often under-digitized firms, integrating them into the ION ecosystem, and aggressively managing them for efficiency. Despite the massive scale of his enterprise, both Pignataro and ION maintain an exceptionally low profile, making him one of the most powerful and least-known figures in the fintech world.