After failing to find a buyer, a digital media and financial conference company has closed down and agreed to liquidate the few assets that it has in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Fintech Nexus, which began as LendIt, hosted financial conferences around the world between 2013 and 2023. It also ran FintechNexus.com, a source of news and information about the financial technology industry, including newsletters and podcasts.

“Along the way, some external challenges, including the pandemic, caused us to take on additional financing — both debt and equity,” chairman and co-founder Peter Renton wrote on the company’s website June 21, “and then in 2023 we suffered from the fintech downturn and had a financially very disappointing outcome to our big USA event.”

The company, which operated out of a coworking space in the Speer neighborhood, sold its events business around this time last year so it could focus on its media side.

“We wanted to see if we could make it a sustainable business without the events business to support it,” Renton said. “Unfortunately, we have not been able to.”

The company went up for sale in April but “that did not pan out either,” according to its co-founder, so Fintech Nexus closed and filed for bankruptcy June 21. A trustee will now take over the company, sell its assets and distribute them among its creditors.

The company has $38,000 in a bank account, plus contacts and email lists of unknown value. It owes $2.2 million and had gross sales of $800,000 in the first half of this year.

The fintech pundit Dara Albright is owed $787,000 and the events company Freeman is owed $450,000, according to Fintech Nexus’ bankruptcy paperwork. An events center in New York is waiting on $185,000 and a hotel in Miami deserves $100,000, the company said.

Jeffrey Brinen at Kutner Brinen Dickey Riley in Denver represents Fintech Nexus.

“While this is certainly not a happy outcome,” Renton wrote, “we have had a fantastic ride.”

— Justin Wingerter, BusinessDen