CBOE Holdings, Inc. is the holding company of two options exchanges and one futures exchange in the U.S. and a leading player in U.S. options trading through its two flagship products, VIX and SPX. The company currently has no debt but we understand that it could potentially raise approximately $1.65 billion as part of its announced acquisition of Bats Global Markets Inc. We are assigning our 'BBB+' long-term issuer credit rating to CBOE. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that CBOE's creditworthiness would not deteriorate if the Bats acquisition materializes on the announced terms. We anticipate that the associated weakening of the financial risk profile would be fully offset by a stronger business risk profile, supported by greater asset class
