French Translation of a Facility Agreement in the Medical Sector

We were recently commissioned to translate into French a facility agreement of about ten pages, within a comfortable timeframe of one week — worth mentioning in the world of urgent legal translations!

Contractual Support for a Strategic Partner

The agreement had been established between a medical equipment manufacturer and one of its long-standing distributors, who was facing temporary financial difficulties.

Its purpose: to formalize a cash advance, combined with conditional discounts, in exchange for meeting defined commercial targets.

A Financial Agreement Outside the Traditional Banking Framework

This type of agreement relies on an exception provided for in the French Monetary and Financial Code, which allows an economic operator to grant credit outside the banking monopoly, in certain specific cases.

The translation therefore required precise handling of terminology at the crossroads of:

• financial law,

• commercial contracts,

• and the law of obligations.

📌 Key Contextual Equivalents

• facility agreement → convention d’ouverture de crédit

• condition precedent → condition suspensive

• working capital → fonds de roulement

• dealer agreement → contrat de concession

• longstop date → date butoir

• default interest → intérêts moratoires

• drawdown → tirage

• event of default → cas de défaut

• financial condition → situation financière

• litigation → procédure contentieuse

• material adverse effect → effet significatif défavorable