The European Commission has formally objected to Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC’s required licensing fees for its securities identification numbers, bringing to light the first public results of an investigation it kicked off in January. According to EC’s preliminary findings, S&P, the sole-appointed National Numbering Agency for U.S. securities, is abusing its monopoly position by requiring financial institutions and information service providers to pay licensing fees for the use of international securities identification numbers in their own databases. The EC considers this an unfair pricing practice. S&P does not incur any costs for the distribution of U.S. identification numbers to financial service providers because the latter do not receive the numbers from S&P but from the information service providers such as Thompson Reuters or Bloomberg.