Bloomberg Brazil’s Acting President Michel Temer is studying the sale of state assets to shore up public accounts, as well as an audit of the country’s largest savings bank, said a government official with direct knowledge of the matter. A government task force will consider selling stakes in companies such as power utility Furnas Centrais Eletricas SA and BR …

  Bloomberg Argentina set rules for its first planned auction for renewable energy, an event that’s expected to spur as much as 1 gigawatt of new capacity led by wind and solar farms. The auction may drive as much as $2 billion in investments, the government said in an e-mailed statement. The deadline to submit proposals is Aug. 22 and …

  Bloomberg The New York Stock Exchange suspended U.S. trading of Brazil’s state-owned utility Eletrobras on Wednesday and began delisting procedures after the company said it would miss a deadline to submit its 2014 financial results. Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, as the utility is formally known, has already delayed the filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission three times …

  Bloomberg Delinquent loans at Indian state banks are rising unabated. Surging bad debt and higher provisions to cover for them caused 10 Indian state-owned lenders to report combined losses of Rs.153 billion ($2.3 billion) for the March quarter. The latest was Punjab National Bank, which reported a wider-than-estimated loss of Rs.53.7 billion this week. State Bank of India, the …

  Reuters The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) governors agreed on Thursday to elect Saudi Arabia’s former haj minister as its new president starting at the beginning of the Islamic year, or in October. The nomination of Bandar Hajjar, whose candidacy was endorsed by the Saudi government and the outgoing IDB President Ahmad Mohamed Ali, was uncontested during an annual meeting …

  Reuters Egypt’s central bank held the pound steady at a regular dollar sale but said the dollars would be directed to imports of pharmaceutical products, manufacturing components, vaccines and related chemicals and infant formula. The bank sold $120 million at the price of 8.78 per dollar, unchanged from last week. That is weaker than the rate for the dollar …

  Bloomberg For energy investors, saving energy has never been as profitable as producing it. That’s starting to change, with institutions from Deutsche Bank AG to Societe Generale SA making it bankable to squeeze more out of electricity and fossil fuels. Their efforts have the potential to channel more money into energy-saving beyond the $45 billion reaped in 2014, blunting …

  BLOOMBERG Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG were among five banks sued over claims that traders conspired to manipulate trading agency bonds issued by government entities and institutions like the World Bank, harming investors who bought and sold the securities. The suit by Boston Retirement System, a pension fund representing city workers, follows inquiries by US and …

  Bloomberg Jean-Baptiste Esmenjaud, 26, hasn’t set foot in his bank in over five years. “La Banque Postale lets me do everything online, and I speak over the phone once a year with an adviser,” said the biology student, a decade-long customer of the state-backed bank whose 9,000-plus French branches gives it one of Europe’s biggest such networks. “I’ve been …

  Bloomberg The Kuwait Investment Authority, which describes itself as the world’s oldest sovereign wealth fund, is targeting global infrastructure projects after taking part in a consortium that bought the London City Airport this year, Chairman Anas Al-Saleh said. The fund has shied away from purchasing trophy assets, focusing on deals that “give us our targeted returns,” Al-Saleh, the country’s …