NEW YORK, July 6, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- This week's Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition centerpiece will focus on the story of Loretta Fredy Bush -- an American woman from Utah who initially moved to Asia for a job in the commodities industry and became one of China's celebrity business executives. But in recent months, Ms. Bush's story has taken a troubling turn.
As the driving force behind the formation of Xinhua Finance, Ms. Bush's profile grew in tandem with the company. Within several years, she had become the company's chief executive officer. Her stakes in companies she helped build were worth more than $100 million at their peak earlier this year. Now, however, shares of Xinhua Finance Media Ltd., the Chinese media company she took public on the Nasdaq Stock Market in March, have lost nearly 40% of their value. Executive resignations in May have prompted questions about a web of transactions between the company and its top executives, which have been enormously profitable to Ms. Bush and others. In addition, the Internal Revenue Service alleged that she engaged in tax fraud.
"Ms. Bush's success is a testament to the opportunities available in China to foreign entrepreneurs who arrived at the right time," write Journal reporters James Areddy and David Reilly in this week's Weekend Edition. "But China's business sector has matured, and both Chinese and foreign businesses have grown more sophisticated about their relations with one another."
Additional stories appearing in this week's Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal include the following:
Money & Investing:
-- Foreign Real-estate Funds: It's getting easier to invest in
Australian shopping malls and Norwegian office towers.
Financial-services firms are rolling out scores of foreign
real-estate funds, and investors are flocking in, despite some of
the risks of dabbling in faraway property markets. In the past
few weeks alone, Charles Schwab & Co. launched a global
real-estate fund designed to bet on strong rental growth in London
office properties. WisdomTree Investments Inc. listed a new
exchange-traded fund that tracks an index heavily weighted to
Australia, Hong Kong and Japan.
-- ETF Industry: Vanguard Group plans to roll out an ETF that will
directly undercut industry giant Barclays Global Investors' most
popular product. The move is a crucial test for the ETF industry,
which will be eagerly watching to see if investors jump ship for
the new fund. It's also being heralded as one of Vanguard's most
significant efforts to date as it struggles to catch up in the
booming ETF business.
Pursuits:
-- Organic Lawns: Two years after Journal editor Wendy Bounds put in
her organic lawn -- fighting skeptical neighbors and defiant
weeds -- she finally has a green, healthy swath of grass. The
same scene is playing out in yards around the country -- but it's
not a peaceful transition. As the organic-lawn movement grows, so
are tensions in some communities. Neighbors are arguing over
whether lawn-care methods are the horticultural equivalent of
secondhand smoke: a choice that affects the whole community. On
one side are those who fear that pesticides and synthetic
fertilizers from nearby homes can threaten their families, pets
and the environment. On the other, some homeowners who say how
they groom their lawns is their own business, along with others
who complain the organic approach results in unkempt lawns that
tarnish the neighborhood's appearance.
-- Film Posted on YouTube: A 71-minute feature film called "Four Eyed
Monsters" has become a hit on YouTube, where its creators recently
posted it free in its entirety through Aug. 15. The film has
played extensively on the film festival circuit, where it has won
several audience and jury awards but hasn't found distribution.
The filmmakers have also set up a deal with the film-discussion
Web site Spout.com in which Spout gives the filmmakers $1 for each
person who joins Spout after clicking through a link posted with
the film on YouTube.
-- New Couture Customers Emerge: How global shifts in wealth are
causing a new group of couture customers to emerge -- and what
Paris's remaining couture houses are doing to attract them.
-- TV Networks Launch Videogames on Web sites: Increasingly, TV
networks are launching videogames on their Web sites to attract
viewers and promote their shows. We look at some newly launched
examples, including ESPN Arcade, a new videogames section on
ESPN's Web site, and new games involving life choices on TLC's Web
site.
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The Wall Street Journal, the flagship publication of Dow Jones & Company (NYSE:DJ) (www.dowjones.com), is the world's leading business publication. Founded in 1889, The Wall Street Journal has a print and online circulation of nearly 2.1 million, reaching the nation's top business and political leaders, as well as investors across the country. Holding 31 Pulitzer Prizes for outstanding journalism, The Wall Street Journal provides readers with trusted information and knowledge to make better decisions. The Wall Street Journal print franchise has more than 600 journalists world-wide, part of the Dow Jones network of nearly 1,800 business and financial news staff. Other publications that are part of The Wall Street Journal franchise, with total circulation of 2.6 million, include The Wall Street Journal Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com, the largest paid subscription news site on the Web. In 2006, the Journal was ranked No. 1 in BtoB's Media Power 50 for the seventh consecutive year.
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Editor's Note: WSJ reporters are available to discuss these topics.