On Sept. 19, 2011, Standard&Poor's lowered its unsolicited long- and short-term sovereign credit ratings on the Republic of Italy to 'A/A-1' from 'A+/A-1+' and maintained the negative outlook. In accordance with our criteria applicable to the relationship between the ratings on financial institutions and their related sovereign in the European Economic&Monetary Union (EMU), and on government-related entities, we are lowering our long-term ratings on seven Italian banks and assigning negative outlooks to the long-term ratings on these banks. We are also revising our outlooks to negative from stable on eight other Italian banks (see Ratings List below). The negative outlooks on the long-term ratings on the 15 banks reflect the possibility we could lower their ratings,
