SHE IS GLAMOROUS, one of the best known faces on Chinese television and one of the richest women in China. Now she has become the leading shareholder in the country's most popular Internet site.
Yang Lan, 33, is chairman of Sun Television Cybernetworks Holdings (Sun TV, Yang Guang Wen Hua), the Hong Kong-listed company which she founded with her husband Bruno Wu Zheng.
Sun TV last week announced a share-swap deal with Sina.com that will see Ms Yang become the largest single shareholder in the Nasdaq-listed portal. Sina.com will issue 4.59 million new shares in Sina.com and pay US$8 million cash to Ms Yang in exchange for 29.3 per cent of Sun TV.
Analysts did not greet the deal with enthusiasm, between two companies that are both losing money and must operate in a highly regulated market in the mainland.
'It was made under the pressure of the capital market, not from operational demand,' said Lu Benfu, an Internet specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 'They want it to be a Chinese version of the AOL-Time Warner merger.' But the agreement is a personal triumph for Ms Yang, giving her a third hat - television presenter, interviewer and now corporate deal-maker.
It enhances her image as a model of a modern Chinese woman for millions of people - rich, elegant, fluent in English, confident with foreigners and married to a media tycoon less famous than herself.