When Jiang Hua started work in 2000 as a channel distribution
manager in China for Rupert Murdoch’s Asian satellite business,
Star TV, wholly owned by News Corp, he was told his job and his
marketing department did not officially exist, reports Hamish McDonald in The SMH. Under Chinese broadcasting regulations, foreign television
companies have to go through state-owned China International
TV Corp, but the way Star TV got around this barrier, with the help of
employees like Mr Jiang, has now landed the ambitious media
tycoon’s empire in big trouble with regulators of potentially the
world’s biggest media market.

The continuing surge in oil prices is taking us into
increasingly unfamiliar territory, says Stephen Bartholomeusz in The Smage. It isn’t that we haven’t
experienced soaring oil prices before – but this time the problem isn’t so much one of supply but of demand.
It’s all China’s “fault.”

Finance Minster Nick Minchin may be preparing a $30 billion sale in
which he gets investment banks to do the lead-up work for nothing in
the hope of some selling fees, says Chanticleer columnist John Durie in
The Fin Review. It probably won’t quite get to that with
the Telstra sale next year but as the bankers prepare their briefs,
that prospect can’t be ignored.

Fairfax is close to finalising
another online investment after overcoming the drift in property and
motor vehicle advertising to the internet and delivering a 24%
rise in annual pre-tax profit, reports The Australian.

Also in The Oz, NAB expects lower profits
next year in the institutional markets and services division that spawned its foreign exchange trading
scandal as the unit exits unprofitable lines of business in the US and
Asia.

On Wall Street, US stocks rallied to a sharply higher close overnight
as investors looked past Hurricane Katrina to focus on economic
fundamentals. The Dow Jones closed up 65.76 points at 10,463 – MarketWatch has a full report here.