A UM alumnus Mr. Medes Ma, the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Stonewood Property Investors and Stonewood Consulting as well as his new colleague, a SJTU alumnus Mr. Victor Xia, gave a speech titled From Briarwood to Stonewood (Briarwood is a shopping neighborhood in University of Michigan) on November 23, 2011 during the JI Entrepreneurship Hour.
Mr. Medes Ma briefed JI students on his company which has diverse businesses, real estate development and investment, project management, building professional service, sales and marketing, and film productions. Mr. Victor Xia introduced their various services. Mr. Ma gave two successful cases of the Stonewood, i.e. reshaping shopping space and marketing for Ritz-Carlton L.A. When Stonewood was awarded the Ritz-Carlton L.A. project, there company was only a-year old. Mr. Ma summarized that timing and luck as well as knowledge of the Chinese marketplace made Stonewood stand out from the competitors. Mr. Xia elaborated how they built up the firm, with collaboration and cross-over projects, and social responsibility projects.
Dr. Vincent Chang, the organizer of JI Entrepreneurship Hour remarked the two speakers’ experiences were encouraging stories, he called on students to challenge themselves.
Afterward, there was a Q & A session.
Q to Mr. Ma: How can an engineer be involved in so many areas including acting? (Earlier it was discussed that Mr. Ma was an actor in a film recently)
A: We did not have a good outlook towards the economy for the upcoming years. So we try to focus on different things.
Q to Mr. Xia: As you hold a BA and an MA in Finance, what drove you to be trilingual as well as pursue an engineering diploma from the French Ecole Centrale (Mr. Xia speaks Chinese, English and French)? Is risk-taking part of the process of being an entrepreneur?
A: My previous jobs in banking were very risky. I learned that some of the skills can overcome the obstacles. I would like to practice skills and create something of my own, so I left banking and became an entrepreneur.
Mr. Medes Ma is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Stonewood Properties Investors and Stonewood Consulting, he serves as CFO. Prior to Stonewood, Mr. Ma was a senior derivatives trader in investment banking and has 14 years of investment experience in Asia. He was most recently head of China trading in Barclays Capital. Among his other roles were, head of rates trading in JPMorgan China and head of credit trading Asia in Credit Agricole. Mr. Ma joined JPMorgan in Hong Kong in 1996 with experience also in Tokyo, Singapore and Shanghai. Medes graduated from University of Michigan with MSE in industrial engineering and BSE with Magna Cum Laude in electrical engineering.
Mr. Victor Xia joined Stonewood in Nov 2011. Prior to that, Mr. Xia spent 3 years as an interest rate derivatives trader at Barclays Capital in Singapore. He has extensive internship experience in investment banking and fixed income trading, including at Barclays Capital Hong Kong, Lehman Brothers Japan and JPMorgan Shanghai. Mr. Xia graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University with BA and MA in Finance. He also obtained Diplôme d’ingénieur from the French Ecole Centrale.
