Dublin’s Ion Raises Offer for Credit Info Provider Cerved

European FinTech group Ion has continued pursuing Italy-based credit and data provider Cerved, now offering €2.54 billion.

Ion is registered in Dublin, and on Friday it increased its offering for Cerved to €10.20 per share.

Ion has been looking voraciously into acquiring Cerved after the company announced its negotiations with private equity funds for the sale of its credit management division.

Cerved is the third-largest collector of non-performing loans in Italy. That area of business has been expected to grow as debt piles up due to the various ripple effects of the pandemic, a Financial Times report says. With the completion of the deal, Ion would now officially own Cedacri, the Italy-based banking software provider, which the company won in an auction this past year.

This builds on Ion’s trend of being one of the more hungry companies for acquisitions — FT reports that it has been growing into a global leader in trading software and financial data. And while Ion has kept a modest profile since 2005, the company has bought up over 20 businesses. That has included some popular brands such as Fidessa and Dealogic, news service Mergermarket and bond trading venue Broadway Technologies. And the company has made deals this year to buy things like U.S.-based trading technology company Dash Financial Technology.

Global mergers and acquisitions have been on the rise as of late, with the global number now up to $3.6 trillion in value, according to recent data from Refinitiv — a number that has already surpassed the full amounts from 2020.

Read more: Global M&A Up 24 Pct Over 2020, Total Value Is $3.6T

Those numbers have been on the rise since the beginning of the year, spurred by low interest rates as well as high stock prices.

The report says there have been a total of 35,128 deals announced, which was a 24 percent jump since last year. The tech sector was the leader in deals.