Road Less Travelled -Interview with Fredy Bush

Originally published in The Peak magazine, Hong Kong, December 2008

"As the older and wiser person I am today, I look back and realise I took a risk for my family and it brought me to China," says Fredy Bush, eyes wide with excitement. "In thinking I was sacrificing for them, it actually gave me my life."

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It is quite an extraordinary statement for the founder and CEO of China’s leading financial news and data analysis company. But then Fredy Bush is no ordinary person. The head of Xinhua Finance and its subsidiary Xinhua Finance Media, she started life as what could be described as a second-class citizen in American’s most tightly religious state. In Utah, as a Mormon in a restricted, male-dominated society, the map of her life, like those of most women, was determined at birth-her primary role would be as wife and mother. And so, at the tender age of 19, Fredy Bush was married with two small children.

Perhaps if her husband had not died in a motorcycle accident when she was in her first year of college, she would still be an obedient housewife in Utah and Xinhua Finance would have been a distant possibility. The accident left her with few opportunities as an uneducated teenage mother. Poverty was her most daunting obstacle-she recalls being unable to the point of being homeless,” she says, in a way that suggests the wounds may not have healed completely. “You just don’t have any room.” Yet now she considers challenge a privilege and says that conquering the uphill battle added depth and understanding to her life.

It took an apparently inconsequential event to change her direction. While marking time in a doctor’s waiting room when one of her children became sick, she picked up a Reader’s Digest and happened to open it to an article on single undereducated teenage mothers.

The statistics stressed the likelihood that her offspring would not attend college but become blue-collar workers involved in drugs or alcohol: Then and there, Fredy Bush vowed never to let that happen.

Moving herself and her children out of Utah and its belief system, she found a job in California with a Taiwanese woman who mentioned lucrative positions for English-speakers working for government officials in Taiwan. In 1985, Fredy Bush and her children moved to Taipei.


FOREIGN FIELDS

It was a culture shock to say the least. Apart from the foreign customs and language, she hadn’t realized Taiwan was still under Chiang kai Shek’s martial law, impose in May 1949- the restrictions especially on free speech and the press were a stark contrast to what she had been used to in her native land. Still, her resolve held, and after finding work as an assistant to the secretary general of Taiwan, she started learning about trading in commodities.

In 1998, martial law was lifted, state-owned enterprises were privatized and the markets liberalized. It was the opportunity Fredy Bush needed. Having learnt Mandarin and having understood the world’s securities markets, she set up a consulting business helping multinational companies identify business opportunities in China, particularly offering advice on the creation of Taipei’s commodities futures market. Then, as China followed Taiwan’s example, in the mid-1990s Fredy Bush’s company linked up with Xinhua News, the official voice of China’s government, providing it with the financial information and analysis that would attract foreign firms to the rapidly expanding Chinese economy.

That led in 1999, to a proposal that the news agency invest in an international financial news and analysis services to which it would also license its name- although she realized( and ensured through links with foreign financial houses) that the business had to be seen as independent of any government control or manipulation.

Fredy Bush literally created indices, ratings, financial news, investor relations services and distribution in a time when none existed: She brought transparency to the Chinese market with disclosure and analysis of the performance of China’s major companies. She went on to found subsidiary Xinhua Finance Media, which distributes financial data, analysis and news through a television, radio, newspaper, magazine and online network.

In less than 10 years, she managed to list the companies on two major international markets: Mothers Board of the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a global lattice of 11 countries and the Nasdaq stock market.

A MAN’ S WORLD

Ironically, the blue-eyed blonde has found herself going from one male-dominated world to another-she is often the only woman in the boardroom. In the past, even though she was the CEO, negotiation dialogue was often directed to male counterparts rather than herself. It has taken a long process to prove herself, but, in the end, there was no denying shareholders were raking in profits. “You finally gain their respect where inevitably they say. “She makes us money so we kind of have to let her in.” she laughs.

The secret to making it, Bush says, is having a dream that excites, the courage to take a risk and , finally, persistence to never give up-particularly if you are an undervalued business woman. Amongst her many accolades, the most meaningful was the Wall Street Journal’s Top 50 Women to Watch award in 2004, because women’s contributions to business, society, charity and global corporate culture are so poorly recognized.

“There’s definitely a glass ceiling. As much as we’ve progressed, it’s still there.” She says. “My belief is that people don’t fail-they quit. I would encourage them not to.” Her kids, after all, represented all the motivation she needed to persevere. They were the catalyst that propelled Bush into one of the most dynamic emerging markets in the world and her involvement in China’s changing regulatory structure presented an undreamed of career opportunity. “It’s pretty historic in a lot of ways.” She smiles. “Our company plays a tiny role in all of that but it’s what makes me want to get out of bed every single day. It’s such an incredible place to do business.”

Asked if she would change any aspect of her past, Fredy Bush answers immediately that she would have enrolled in college had she been able to afford it. She still managed to beat the statistics by putting both her children through university and any future grandchildren will have the same advantages.

FULL CIRCLE

In fact, education remains so close to Bush’s heart she founded the Chazara Foundation to provide girls in poverty-stricken Chinese provinces like Ningxia with schooling. Annual high-school fees account for more than half an average household’s yearly income and boys usually have priority- if the chance ever even arises.

The next step was creating the Xinhua Finance Library Foundation to build libraries in poor villages, further giving children with no formal education a head start. So far, three libraries have been built in Ningxia and another in Inner Mongolia, with a total of 7,000 donated books. Bush has every intention of immersing herself fully in charity work when she retires.

The main dilemma she face now is how to raise the visibility and encourage involvement in the tow foundations without making them overly large and impersonal. She is intent on avoiding overheads that result in a small percentage of every dollar reaching those in need. At present, only one member of staff oversees the charities, allowing the majority of the funds to go directly to students and books.

Yet she remains personally fully involved. Every Friday night, she takes home a stack of folders and the following morning, writes letters to pupils sponsored by the Chazara Foundation. With more than 1,000 students to date, keeping abreast of correspondence is no mean feat. However, she wouldn’t have it any other way and takes the same approach with the Library Foundation.

“Rather than just writing a cheque and feeling like we’ve done our charitable deed, we actually dig the people in the village,” Fredy Bush divulges, with the hope that the tight-knit bond with her students will continue well after they complete there studies. She is keen to know when they marry or reach other turning points in life, much as if they were her own. Many wonder how they can repay Bush but she asks only in return that they pass on the goodwill.

She also hopes those supported by the Chazara Foundation may one day return to volunteer themselves. With so much time dedicated to her family, biological and other, it’s no wonder that, several years ago, Fredy Bush wondered if the trade-offs she was making for her nearest and dearest meant giving up a life she never had. But, as she says, she now realizes it was precisely that sacrifice that has made her life such a success.