Bloomberg A revolution in south Australia is wresting power from utility-owned grids and putting it inside batteries installed inside the homes of electricity consumers. Billed as the world’s biggest “virtual power plant,” AGL Energy Ltd. is installing 1,000 batteries in and around Adelaide at a cost of about A$20 million ($15 million), according to a statement on Friday. The ...

  Bloomberg Oil traders once again believe it’s worth heading out to sea. The market structure for Brent crude, the benchmark for more than half the world’s oil, now makes it viable to store supplies in a ship to potentially lock in profits on a sale six months later, according to a Bloomberg survey of 6 traders and analysts. In ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer John Cryan signaled Germany’s largest lender may have to deepen cost cuts after second-quarter profit was almost wiped out by a slump in trading revenue and costs tied to job reductions. The shares declined. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Britain’s largest taxpayer-owned lender, posted a larger loss than estimated in the ...

  AFP US bank JPMorgan Chase denied that it ever intended to buy troubled Italian rival BMPS, as people close to the alleged deal had reported. “This is not accurate and was never under consideration,” a JPMorgan spokesperson said. Sources who asked to remain anonymous had indicated that Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the largest US bank by assets, and ...

  Bloomberg A cut to lenders’ reserve requirements would add too much liquidity to the financial system and lead to yuan depreciation expectations, China’s central bank said late Friday. Frequent reductions will also spur declines in borrowing costs, the People’s Bank of China said, adding that the relatively strong signal from a lowering of reserve-requirement ratios could fuel speculative currency ...

  Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc surged in London trading as first-half loan impairment charges fell by a third, signaling further progress in Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters’s plan to turn around the bank a year into his tenure. The shares were briefly halted after jumping as much as 11 percent, after provisions for bad loans declined to $1.1 billion in ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England’s corporate-bond purchase program, announced on Thursday, has been met by skepticism from some credit market analysts, who say precedents across the Channel don’t bode well for the program’s ability to stimulate issuance. While credit market observers reckon the BOE’s corporate-bond program will engineer a modest reduction in borrowing costs across the sterling bond market ...

  Japanese growth is still sluggish. Consumers aren’t consuming much, and businesses aren’t investing. The government doesn’t have many options to remedy this, and the Bank of Japan, which has sent both long-term and short-term interest rates into negative territory, has basically no more room to maneuver. The dreaded Zero Lower Bound is starting to bite. The BOJ is buying ...

  Mac Margolis Every four years, political leaders have tried to set aside feuds and celebrate the world’s best athletes as they compete for medals and glory — a tradition that harkens back to the first Olympic Games held in Greece some 3,000 years ago. Apparently, the Brazilians didn’t get the message. One day before the opening ceremonies for the ...

  Bloomberg Mercedes-Benz is planning its own distinct line of electric vehicles, challenging BMW and Tesla Motors Inc. in a bet that alternative-fuel cars have the potential to become profitable. Mercedes will add two electric sport utility vehicles and two sedans, according to two people familiar with the plan, who asked not to be named because the details haven’t been ...