agence de notation

Hello everyone

I don't really understand what this sentence means - I understand most of the vocab, but not the idea that is being expressed:

"Vous le savez, les marchés financiers font régulièrement appel à des agences de notation qui notent la responsabilité sociale des entreprises. Ce que montrent les acteurs financiers en faisant appel aux agences, c’est que la réflexion de court terme ne leur a pas toujours permis d’évaluer les vrais gagnants."

Thanks

An agency which is in charge of giving grades / marks / evaluating...

I'm not really sure what that is in English...

Rating agency.

Bonjour
These rating agencies give letter grades to banks, businesses, and the like. Moody's in the United States is an example of a large, important one.

A préciser...

Typically it would be Ratings Agency in English, in the plural. This also tends to be synecdochic for the "Big Three" ratings firms, Moody's, Fitch's and Standard & Poor's, all US firms charged with 'rating' or 'grading' the debt issued by companies and governments.

For example the government bonds of France, the USA and the UK are all "triple A" rated, i.e. the best rating which carries no risk of default (traditionally wealthy countries were considered 'risk free', i.e. they would never default, but the Greek debt crisis has rattled this belief). Companies tend to be more variable, let's take BNP Paribas's long term debt as an example:
Moody's: Aa2
Fitch's: AA-
Standard & Poor's: AA

They all essentially say the same thing which is that BNP Paribas has very stable and secure debt. Anything between "triple A" rated and Baa3 (for Moody's) is known as 'investment grade' debt, something which is highly secure and stable.
Anything less than this is 'speculative grade' debt, or more commonly know as junk bonds, something which is highly risky to invest in, but carries greater returns.

Ratings agencies do not carry any legislative or executive powers, they merely analyse publicly available information on listed companies and post this analysis with respect to their ratings.

JDnCoke

The official term is credit rating agency.

See this link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agency

Hi schweet,

The translation of "Vous le savez, les marchés financiers font régulièrement appel à des agences de notation qui notent la responsabilité sociale des entreprises. Ce que montrent les acteurs financiers en faisant appel aux agences, c’est que la réflexion de court terme ne leur a pas toujours permis d’évaluer les vrais gagnants."

would be smthg like that:

You know, financial markets are in the habit of asking rating agencies to assess the social responsibility from companies. What is shown by the finance players when they request rating agencies is that short term considerations do not always allow to assess the real winners

hope that help

Hi schweet,

The translation of "Vous le savez, les marchés financiers font régulièrement appel à des agences de notation qui notent la responsabilité sociale des entreprises. Ce que montrent les acteurs financiers en faisant appel aux agences, c’est que la réflexion de court terme ne leur a pas toujours permis d’évaluer les vrais gagnants."

would be smthg like that:

You know, financial markets are in the habit of asking rating agencies to assess the social responsibility from companies. What is shown by the finance players when they request rating agencies is that short term considerations do not always allow to assess the real winners

hope that help