On December 11, 2014, Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”) lowered Nasdaq’s rating on its senior unsecured debt from BBB to BBB- and on its issuer credit from BBB/Negative to BBB-/Stable. The revisions are based on S&P’s review of the ratings of 20 global financial market infrastructure (“FMI”) companies by applying its revised criteria for FMI companies published on December 9, 2014. In its release, S&P states that the revisions are due to a change in criteria applied by S&P rather than a sudden change of the issuers’ creditworthiness.