On May 10, 2017, AXA insurance group announced plans to pursue an IPO of a minority stake of its U.S. life insurance and asset-management operations. Because of this announcement, we now view AXA's U.S. life entities as strategic to the group instead of core, and as a result, we lowered our ratings on these companies by one notch (see "AXA Financial Inc. Downgraded To ?A-? And Placed On CreditWatch Negative; AXA Financial Group Downgraded To ?A+?"). We are affirming our ratings on the other AXA insurance subsidiaries that we view as core or highly strategic to the group. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that the group's capital and earnings will remain strong over the next two years. On May
