Bill Clinton has started negotiating an end to his role in a global fund partnership he shares with billionaire friend Ron Burkle and an organization owned in part by an entity connected to the ruler of Dubai -- a deal that could help him reap $20 million and protect his wife's presidential campaign from potential conflicts of interest, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The newspaper reports that Clinton actually ended his role with Burkle's firm, Yucaipa Cos., where he has been a senior adviser since 2002, last year, but has yet to receive his share of profits from two domestic funds run by Yucaipa and the foreign investment fund buy-out.

Hillary Clinton herself has raised concerns about such sovereign wealth funds, telling the Journal that major purchases in U.S. corporations by foreign governments are "a source of concern" and that the funds" lack transparency."

Click here to read The Wall Street Journal article on Bill Clinton's ties to Yucaipa (subscription required).

The Journal reported that Bill Clinton's severing the tie to Dubai could "remove a potentially tricky problem for Mrs. Clinton" by eliminating the seeming contradiction between her policy and her husband's activities.

Bill Clinton's reported attempt to bow out of this relationship comes as Hillary Clinton's chief rival for the nomination, Barack Obama, persistently strikes at her for corporate ties.

In the testy Democratic debate in South Carolina Monday night, Obama told Clinton "while I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart. " Hillary Clinton left the board in 1992 when her husband began his presidential bid.

A spokesman for the former president told the Journal he "is taking step to ensure" there will be "an appropriate transition" for the business ties if his wife wins the Democratic nomination.

The paper reported that Clinton's first public sign of a pullback from the company came when he did not participate in an investment in Beijing-based Xinhua Finance Media Ltd., a news company with ties to China's communist government.