Bloomberg Brazil’s interim government is seeking a market-driven approach for the electricity industry amid waning power demand, growing debt and consecutive losses at the country’s largest power company. The administration of Acting President Michel Temer will scale back heavy-handed policies in the power industry and reduce dependence on state development bank BNDES for financing, said Paulo Pedrosa, executive secretary ...

  Venezuela / AFP Venezuelans facing severe food shortages might have been expected to welcome heavily subsidized bags of rice, milk and other staples — but the controversy didn’t take long to set in. The bags, distributed to poor families every three weeks, represent President Nicolas Maduro’s latest plan to combat the increasingly desperate economic crisis that has taken hold ...

  Beijing / AP China agreed to try to slash excess output of steel, avoid competitive devaluations of its currency and to wind down unprofitable “zombie enterprises,” US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said on Tuesday as the two countries wrapped up annual high-level meetings in Beijing. The commitment to persist with reforms to make China’s economy more balanced included specific steps ...

  Sydney / AP Australia’s central bank held interest rates steady at the all-time low of 1.75 percent on Tuesday following strong growth figures, while keeping an eye on low inflation. The Reserve Bank of Australia cut the official cash rate from 2.0 percent last month to spur the economy, but gave little indication of further easing in a statement ...

Seoul / AFP South Korea has called for car giant Nissan to face criminal charges for allegedly manipulating emissions data on a popular sports utility vehicle, weeks after Seoul slapped the firm with a fine over the issue. The environment ministry called on state prosecutors to probe Nissan Korea after saying tests had shown an emission defeat system on the ...

  Shanghai / Bloomberg China’s cities need about 6.6 trillion yuan ($1 trillion) of green financing over the next five years to reach its pollution-reduction targets, according to a report. Financial markets will need to cover as much as 90 percent of investment funding for clean transportation, energy-efficient buildings and renewable power through 2020, according to the executive summary of ...

  Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc, the London-based bank that generates most of its income from Asia, is seeking to double operating profit at its Pakistan unit within five years as the country’s economy grows and banks churn out more loans. The bank is targeting an advance to deposit ratio of at least 45 percent in 12 months from 35 percent ...

  Bloomberg June is out. July might be too soon. The Federal Reserve’s next interest-rate increase is coming, but even September isn’t a sure bet. That’s the message investors and economists are taking from Chair Janet Yellen’s remarks. Her comments were the last the public will hear from a Fed official before the central bank’s policy-setting meeting next week. In ...

  BLOOMBERG Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer John Cryan said Germany’s largest lender is abandoning plans for a new digital bank in the US, led by Henry Ritchotte, just months after it was announced. While the team under Ritchotte developed an “excellent blueprint” for the service in the US, Deutsche Bank decided that the project would “divert resources from ...

  Bloomberg Zimbabwe’s central bank threatened to cancel the licenses of banks and foreign-currency dealers found to have violated new exchange-control regulations aimed at easing a dollar shortage. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe last week sent a directive changing the way banks and other authorized foreign-currency dealers are required to handle export earnings, adding measures aimed at encouraging companies to ...