Dow Jones buys remaining 40 percent stake in WSJ’s Japan site

Dow Jones & Co. announced Friday that it has acquired the 40 percent stake of its Japanese language site for The Wall Street Journal that it didn’t already own from its business partner.

Following completion of the acquisition, Dow Jones will expand operations of the web site, which is one of the fastest-growing local-language offerings within the Journal’s digital portfolio. WSJ.com’s Japanese-language edition, which was launched in December 2009, has more than 2 million visitors a month and is complemented by Japanese-language smartphone and tablet apps optimized for Apple and Android devices.

“The acquisition demonstrates Dow Jones’s continued investment in publishing, particularly in high-growth markets and in digital, local-language initiatives,” said Lex Fenwick, CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of The Journal, in a statement. “Together with the WSJ.com Chinese-language edition and soon-to-launch Bahasa Indonesia news site, the expansion in Japanese enables us to continue reaching new readers in Asia and to introduce them to the broader, comprehensive coverage of The Wall Street Journal worldwide.”

Added Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of The Journal, “This significant investment is evidence of our determination to expand the Journal across platforms and languages. It is also a sign of our commitment to Japan, which is the world’s third-largest economy and seemingly at the start of a new phase of global expansion. That expansion is contingent upon companies and investors being able to make well-informed decisions and our aim is to ensure that Japanese readers have access to the world’s foremost news and analysis in their own language. As Matsuo Basho, the great Japanese poet, noted: ‘No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.'”

Edited from the Journal’s Tokyo bureau, the site currently features coverage of local business, finance and political news, in addition to translated articles from The Wall Street Journal’s global editions.

Read more here. In an email to the Journal staff on Friday, Thomson called the deal a “modest investment but a significant statement of intent.”