means a group consisting of two or more juristic persons, irrespective of whether any of those persons is domiciled in the same country as any of the others, and one or more of which is a credit rating agency, where—
| (a) | each of the juristic persons is an associate of any one of the others; or |
| (b) | the juristic persons are so interconnected that should one of them experience financial difficulties, another one or all of them would likely be adversely affected; |