On Jan. 13, 2012, Standard&Poor's lowered its unsolicited long- and short-term sovereign credit ratings on the Republic of Italy to 'BBB+/A-2' from A/A-1, assigned a negative outlook, and removed the ratings from CreditWatch negative. We have revised our Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment (BICRA) on Italy to group '4' from group '3', and our economic risk and industry risk scores on Italy to '4' from '3'. We are lowering our long- and short-term ratings on UniCredit SpA and its "core" subsidiary UniCredit Leasing SpA to 'BBB+/A-2' from 'A/A-1' and removing them from CreditWatch negative. The negative outlook reflects the possibility that we could lower the ratings on UniCredit and UniCredit Leasing if we lower our ratings on the