PRBT: This is the kind of speech you read more than once. If you’re one of those looking at Puerto Rico to invest in, move to, or set up a company in, it may be the only speech you’ll need to read. If you’re in Puerto Rico wondering when and how the island will begin its long-awaited recovery, it IS the only speech you need to read. It was delivered last week during a government-led promotion trip in Brazil by Nicholas Prouty, a Law 22 investor who has become The Vision — the man whose powerful new voice on the island keeps shedding light on the island’s new path into the future. One element along that path, his Ciudadela investment in the Santurce sector of San Juan, is presented here as something far bigger and more innovative than anyone has probably envisioned to date. Check it out…

Speech by Nicholas Prouty. September 3, 2014.

Good afternoon and “muito obrigado” for being here.

I am big believer in the people of Puerto Rico, and my firm’s experiences are easily replicable should you make the wise decision to either invest in Puerto Rico or to expand your operations there.

In terms of background, my firm Putnam Bridge buys distressed assets – everything from residential and commercial real estate to old Boeing 767s that get disassembled and the parts sold.

At this point you might ask yourself, am I in the right ballroom? This is the pharma conference, isn’t it? Frankly, it’s a reasonable question, but hopefully by the time I finish it will make better sense as to why I got on a plane and flew all night to have the pleasure to speak to you about my favorite place in the world – Puerto Rico.

When my firm makes the decision to invest in a new market, we do quite a lot of research. We start at the beginning, meaning sleeves rolled up, little currency paid to conventional wisdom, original analysis – no piggybacking on the research conducted by others – and no preset and usually wrong assumptions.

That’s what we did when we decided to look at Puerto Rico. The more I asked people in New York about their opinions on Puerto Rico, the more I kept hearing the same thing – a key indicator that the narrative had been set, that the same old tired stories were being repeated didn’t necessarily mean the stories were wrong but it did mean that most people had stopped doing their own research and were relying on others, and that is when I get interested in a place.

On a macro basis, we focused broadly on risk with particular emphasis on gaining an understanding of the island’s commitment to STEM-based education – a harbinger of future growth. We analyzed political continuity – were contracts honored? And we discovered what I call the “joyful quotient” of Puerto Rico’s people.

We found that the deep recession had beaten down property values to generationally low levels, creating what we believed were tremendous market opportunities that would allow us to play a role in the renaissance of the Puerto Rican economy.

Coming from the New York property market, I knew full well what these business cycles were like – value appreciation to dizzying heights followed by the all too quickly forgotten principle of gravity. What goes up must come down.

That said, Putnam Bridge buys assets based on a variety of factors. We employ the usual methodologies and techniques such as discounted cash flow analysis, and sensitivity studies based on forced liquidation valuations, but one of the hardest and most important factors in determining the future success of a target acquisition is the hardest to quantify – the employees.

Some of you might have heard the old saying: “the greatest assets of a company go up and down in the elevator” – from vantage point, it might be an old saying, but there sure is a lot of truth to it. If they are properly motivated and compensated, there are great workers everywhere. But workers in Puerto Rico fall into another category altogether.

Puerto Ricans are creative and process driven, to use a boxing metaphor. They are people who will stay down on the mat for only a short time before getting up. The ref might be getting close to ten, but they get up, and when they do, they come out of the ring swinging. They are incapable of doing anything else. If you want to see magic, just tell a Puerto Rican they cannot do something. They will make it happen every time! So it is with this unwavering belief in her people that we decided to move there and sign some extremely big checks!

So what makes me such a passionate believer in these people called the Boricuas? Sometimes it takes people coming from outside to see possibilities locals and the “experts” may miss.

Oh sure, the tax incentives are amazing, but that was only a consideration and not a decision driver for us. I have never made an investment decision based solely on taxes and hopefully I never will. Taxes are an expense, not a cost.

From a business risk standpoint, Puerto Rico falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal court system, which provides for all of the rights afforded by our Constitution and the same rule of law which makes the United States the safest jurisdiction to do business, including due process, intellectual property protections, and the all-important enforceability of contracts. Virtually every industry falls under the purview of federal regulations or oversight, including the FDA, FAA and EPA, just to name a few.

And Puerto Rico’s business infrastructure is well developed, with world-class attorneys, accountants, bankers, engineers, technologists, academics, and virtually every discipline necessary to conduct the most complex of transactions.

That said, there are a number of things investors will find very different. Chief among them is that federal income taxes do not apply to residents of Puerto Rico, including individuals and corporations.

So we’re talking here about a country able to offer incentives no other U.S. state can offer, but a country that because of its status as a U.S. territory is as much a part of the U.S. federal system as any of the 50 states. In other words, it’s just like being in a state, but without the taxes.

You’re also hearing today about Puerto Rico’s other amazing advantages – the direct flights and developed distribution networks to the U.S. mainland and Latin America, the physical and digital infrastructure, our strategic location smack in the middle of the hemisphere, the tropical climate 12 months out of the year, the highly developed clusters and supplier ecosystems stretching across multiple industries, a government bending over backwards and cutting through red tape, all to provide your organization with the tools necessary to make your experience in Puerto Rico a positive and profitable one.

There are literally billions of investment dollars looking at Puerto Rico, ready to ignite what my partner and I think will be an historic recovery – a recovery that will lift the island out of its current situation, a recovery that will inspire underestimated people around the globe. In fact, we’re seeing the early stages of a renaissance, and a growing number of us have decided to get in on it, to help shape it.

One of the outcomes we see unfolding is the transformation of Puerto Rico into one of those unique and amazing places that everyone craves to visit and call home. We hear those words and think of places like Sao Paulo, Miami and Barcelona, more recently Dubai, Singapore and Shanghai. For my generation of finance types, it was New York, London and Tokyo.

When I was growing up, I was fascinated by all things global. I couldn’t wait to grow up and trade the cement of Brooklyn for the cobblestones on Stockholm or Zurich.

I had a map of the world next to my bed, and after my parents said good night, I would study it religiously. The Northern and Western Hemisphere were located right in the middle of my map, just as we North Americans like to see ourselves relative to the rest of the planet!

However, when I began to travel on business – when my meetings were over – I would discover dusty old bookstores and print shops and search for old maps of the cities and countries I was visiting.

I quickly came to the realization that the position of a country on a map was a pure function of where the map was printed. For example, I remember this old man from Melbourne showing me a map of Australia, a continent that we all know is firmly a part of the Southern Hemisphere. Australia was perfectly centered in the middle and the world was organized around it.

My mind was blown for days. I had always viewed Antarctica as the bottom most land mass on nearly every map and now Florida was where Greenland should have been!

I quickly realized that as fantastic as I thought the United States was, it clearly was not the center of it all – although I’m sure President George W. Bush would disagree.

Every country and culture carries its own beauty and operates on its own logic. That is especially true of these global centers of finance, commerce and tourism. I imagine children growing up in each of those places have maps on their walls – their own countries in the center of it all.

That is most certainly true of Brazil – what an amazing place! The world got a chance to see it this summer during the World Cup, and we will again when you amaze us once more in 2016, at the games of the 28th Olympiad.

I’ve always loved coming to Sao Paulo – not just to enjoy the food and culture – but to see the deep pride you feel for this great land tempered by an almost serene humility.

In the early 90s, I lived in Argentina and I would spend about three weeks every month in Buenos Aires and one week in Brazil, and you now have a seat at the global table. I couldn’t be happier for you. In fact, Brazil has become such an international powerhouse that now the websites of the fanciest five-star hotels on the French Rivera or the Swiss Alps feature Portuguese as one of the two or three languages they offer – I don’t think it is because of an increase in tourism from Lisbon.

It should surprise no one that Brazil has accomplished so much over these last 25 years — just remarkable, and we cannot wait to have your enthusiasm, creativity and intelligence in Puerto Rico. You will find a people so similar to your own – you will meet your long lost brothers and sisters. Just as happened here, the Puerto Rico turnaround will be the result of very hard work. It will have nothing to do with destiny – no one deserves anything – everything must be earned.

Puerto Rico has everything it takes to join Brazil as one of those places that defied the odds and got down to work. That is why I’m so bullish on Puerto Rico. It is the vision that drives our investments there.

But this is far more than just business – it is a labor of love, the stuff of passion, to be an integral part of a national project so special and once-in-a-lifetime – that is gratifying, that is what makes me jump out of bed in the morning.

So how are we at Putnam Bridge turning that vision into a reality? Can our case study help you learn about the possibilities in Puerto Rico?

I mentioned earlier that the historically low real-estate values have created ample opportunities throughout the island. Well, that includes bringing to Puerto Rico one of the most amazing and promising trends sweeping the world today – the revitalization of urban centers.

It is what Jaime Lerner did in Curitiba and what other cities have done here in Brazil. It is called new urbanism, placemaking, sustainable cities – it goes by different names, but the end result is the same: transforming otherwise cool but downtrodden neighborhoods into amazing and iconic places to live, work, and raise a family.

It is not about gentrification, though. You have to remain ever vigilant not destroy a community’s integrity. You do not want to make an area so unaffordable that the very people who make the community so interesting are priced out.

In Puerto Rico, one of those cool districts is called Santurce. It’s an historic middle and lower income community in San Juan. The main avenue that runs across Santurce, from end to end, east to west, is called Ponce de León, and at one time it was the epicenter of San Juan’s social and cultural life.

From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, as the island was industrializing and getting out of poverty, Ponce de León was the consummate urban heartbeat. Over a dozen theaters opened, along with fantastic restaurants, galleries, bookstores and shops.

In fact, when the Commonwealth celebrated a Miss Universe or international sports competition, the parades went down Ponce de León, masses of happy people lining the streets, others cheering from the upper balconies. If you lived in Santurce in 1970, the future felt forever good and prosperous.

That was before the 1973 oil shock and ensuing recession that sent not just Santurce, but the entire island into disarray. The rest of Puerto Rico recovered a sense of normalcy.

Santurce did not.

It sunk into the sort of urban decay that has shut down neighborhoods across America and in so many other cities around the world. Some of the theaters remained theaters, but most either closed or were repurposed. The bulk of the population moved out. Parades? Well, there haven’t been any since. Businesses shut down, including shops and department stores once considered part of Puerto Rican lore.

But by the time I began exploring the island in 2011, Santurce was on its way back. A large group of visionary community, government and business leaders, many from the gay community, had set off a process and made some key strategic investments to make people believe in Santurce again.

A couple of shuttered theaters reopened. On De Diego Avenue, which crosses with Ponce de León, a new and stunning Museum of Art was built, to match the Performing Arts Center a stone’s throw away on Ponce de León. Down from there, the new and equally stunning Music Conservatory was built by a brilliant and larger than life character named Guillermo Martinez, a Horatio Alger type who had arrived in Puerto Rico penniless at a young age and went on to create a fortune. Further west, the Miramar section of Santurce had become a spot right out of Paris, with a fine-arts cinema and trendy restaurants.

Smack in the middle of all that action on Ponce de León, back east near the Performing Arts Center and new Art Museum, a group of developers had built a beautiful condominium, office and retail complex.

They called it Ciudadela – that would be Citadela in Portuguese, what the old fortress cities were called back in the colonial days.

Prior to the recession that began in 2006 – Ciudadela and other new properties were supposed to be the centerpieces of Santurce’s urban renewal. But the recession hit hard. Few people moved in. The properties sat largely empty, a huge problem for the banks that were left holding the notes.

Meanwhile, though, the community around Ciudadela began to show signs of activity. The trendiness caught on. Coffee shops, bookstores, galleries and chic restaurants opened. About 40 tech companies moved in and created what is now known as the Digital Corridor.

Santurce had acquired a sort of coolness – a favored spot for San Juan’s new generation of cultural creative: artists, authors, filmmakers, students, professors and a growing number of professionals in search of that cultural feeling – and, of course, a Wi-Fi connection.

My partner and I saw the possibilities immediately, brought a team down, augmented it with a group of extremely bright locals, and began to conduct extensive due diligence.

Three months later, we wrote a very large check and bought Ciudadela. It has been a year and a half since, and we have now sold and rented everything!

Our buildings are filled with college and post graduate credentialed professionals. Our office space is rented by the future of Puerto Rico – Alvarez, Diaz and Villalon, Seriously Creative, Yolo Restaurant, Christie’s affiliate Trillion Realty, a gym called Planet Fitness with over 17,000 members, the most innovative grocery store in Puerto Rico — Pueblo — and our soon to be neighbors, the Foundation for Puerto Rico led by Jon Borschow.

We are on the front lines of the new economy – and, ladies and gentleman, it is as exhilarating and as satisfying a business as I have ever been involved in!

Next month, we break ground on the next phase of the building: 252 new apartments, 50,000 square feet of retail, an investment of over $100 million using no debt, all equity. If that is not putting your money where your mouth is, than I do not know what is.

So why do this? If you read the headlines about Puerto Rico, you would have to think I must be crazy. But I’m not. But then again most people who are crazy don’t think they are crazy, so what can I tell you!

We see all the news and we hear the talk about people leaving Puerto Rico for Florida and Texas. But if that were the case, how could we have sold all our apartments? How could the place be filled with people, day and night? Because things are never as bad as people tell you, and conversely, they are never as good, either.

The fact is, Ciudadela has lived up to the promise of becoming the heart and soul of the new Puerto Rico. Richard Carrion, the brilliant and visionary global banker was ultimately right, and he and his team saw something very few could envision – a new and vibrant Santurce.

We’re focused on not just lifting the Ciudadela district – but on taking this model of placemaking and new urbanism to create new hubs of human vitality all around Santurce.

To me, urbanism isn’t just good business. It’s a way to lift the Puerto Rican economy – to create jobs, to stimulate economic activity and to participate in the making of the new Puerto Rico, one block at a time.

The companies that come in will want to set up shop in this fantastic neighborhood. Our talented and joyful people will launch innovative companies in those districts. Consumers will love to shop there – others will simply come for a stroll on our well lit and tree lined streets – and we know from statistics that the more people gather in a community, the lower crime rates fall.

It is, in the end, business with a higher purpose – beyond just profitability – business that makes a difference. It’s a model that calls for the private sector to invest its own capital in these districts without waiting for the government. The best example is an empty lot between Ciudadela and the Art Museum. We’re turning it into a gorgeous community park, and we’re paying for it ourselves, something that has never happened in the history of Puerto Rico – $6 million dollars from our company to our community.

And it’s not just the funding. We’re also taking steps to strengthen the community itself. We seek to turn falling-down buildings into elder-care homes, because diversity in all its forms – race, age, income – is one of the founding pillars of great neighborhoods.

Think about it. Why is St. Germain-des-Pres in Paris so fantastic? The secret is to have people from all walks of life and social backgrounds interacting and building relationships with each other. Bumping into each other – no gated communities, no 1%, no resentments.

This brand of placemaking and new urbanism is also great for the environment and one of the solutions to climate change. Driving declines, taking carbon emissions down with it, since people walk more and use more mass transit. We’re promoting green building improvements, as well, like solar energy, energy-saving sensors, recycling and rainwater recapture, all of which reduces everyone’s expenses, and those practices reduce carbon further. As the community becomes more united, it also becomes more resilient and better able to respond to extreme weather events.

The New York Times recently ran a story regarding the alarming exodus of French technology firms to London — 350,000 French nationals are now living and working in England as a result of the punishing bureaucracy and regressive tax regime created by Francois Hollande. These entrepreneurs left their beloved France in search of a better business climate in which to launch their ideas.

It is one of our highest tasks in Puerto Rico to do as England has done and create a business and cultural environment which will allow a new generation from the Americas and beyond to settle in Puerto Rico in search of the wealth offered by our incentives, and of the quality of life we can offer in our renewed urban districts.

New urbanism is only one of the positive trends I want to highlight. There’s also the 20/22 movement you’re hearing about at the conference today. Hundreds of new companies are expected to set up shop in Puerto Rico between now and the year 2020. It has already begun, and it has surpassed expectations. This conference is part of that process.

Law 22 investors moving to the island are in the process of creating a capital market that may very well hover at around $50 billion in the coming years, providing the capital to finance new companies, build exciting new tourist attractions, invest in our thriving urban districts, and otherwise make Puerto Rico the aspirational, iconic place we envision.

Thousands of new companies and the hundreds of thousands of new jobs created will mean more customers and tenants to strengthen our asset values even further.

I’ll give you another reason why investing in Puerto Rico makes sense from our perspective. Act 20/22 and the other incentive laws are designed to transform Puerto Rico into an export hub for services. But Puerto Rico is already, and has been since the 50s, one of the hottest export hubs for manufactured goods.

Antonio Medina of the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, and Waleska Rivera of the Puerto Rico Manufacturers Association, in masterful displays of visionary industrial promotion, are showing the world that this island has what it takes to attract the world’s top manufacturers — manufacturers that will build high-value products requiring the high-skill talent that Puerto Rico so excels at. So I have every reason to believe that the island will meet its promise of becoming, just as it is today a pharmaceutical powerhouse, the world’s new center of aerospace manufacturing.

That would not have happened were it not for a Governor who honored the agreements of the former governor and allowed the airport to be privatized by Aerostar, a Mexican company headed up by a tireless advocate for Puerto Rico, Agustin Arellano. Political continuity was achieved – and not at the expense of the flying customer.

Leadership in other segments will be achieved without relinquishing our pharmaceutical leadership, the leading industrial segment on the island.

As a result of the patent cliff, the rapid incursion of high-quality generic products and the tight squeeze on healthcare costs by governments and health plans around the world, branded pharma now represents about 15% of global medicine production.

The shrinkage has been ferocious, and gigantic consolidations have reduced the number of players. Yet, in spite of these headwinds, Puerto Rico remains a hub, rewarded by pharma companies for its talent, efficiency and other advantages. And it is because of those very same reasons that generic-drug manufacturing could become increasingly more important on the island,

Generic pharmaceuticals have become the new blockbuster drugs of the 21st century. Thanks to their bargain prices, generic sales are increasing at the rate of 10% annually, and there remains no better place to manufacture than Puerto Rico, particularly as it relates to gaining FDA approval.

Here are the facts that my fellow presenters have already provided, but they deserve repeating:

• Puerto Rico is the fifth largest market for pharmaceutical manufacturing in the world with more than 80 plants located across the island.
• Puerto Rico is the third-largest biotechnology manufacturer in the world with more than two million square feet of state of the art facilities.
• Sixteen of the 20 top selling drugs in the U.S. are manufactured in Puerto Rico.
• Puerto Rico is the 7th largest medical device exporter with more than 50 world class plants.

How is all that possible on an island that is about 100 by 35 miles? How can such a small place have such a disproportionate share of the market?

Is it because Puerto Rico has beautiful beaches and palm trees? Does our outstanding food play a factor? Could it be because Puerto Rico has had five Miss Universe winners – a statistic that definitely deserves further study – or maybe, just maybe, it is because Puerto Rico is constantly innovating, constantly challenging itself to remain the epicenter of the global Pharmaceutical Industry, even now, especially now, when the industry is undergoing a massive transformative process worldwide.

In terms of history, Big Pharma stormed the shores of Puerto Rico in the late 1960s and ’70s, and the place has never been the same since. In came the Merck’s, Glaxo’s and Pfizer’s of the world to take advantage of the now-expired federal tax incentive known as Section 936. Puerto Rico transformed itself into a worldwide pharmaceutical powerhouse with a pharma ecosystem second to none. And today, after this long period of development and leadership, Puerto Rico’s competitive advantages still revolve around four principal attributes:

1. Tax benefits: Companies relocating or expanding their operations to Puerto Rico benefit from a 7% maximum income tax rate, with some companies paying as little as 2%. There is no tax on dividend distributions. There is a super-deduction of up to 200% for R&D expenses, job training costs and accelerated depreciation on the cost of office and plant buildings, including equipment. Finally, there are unlimited loss carry forwards, and taxation is simpler. Unlike the system here in Brazil, we pay taxes on a company’s P&L, not on a transactional basis.

2. Human Resources. This is a major decision driver as to why companies continue to operate and are drawn to the island. In Puerto Rico, it is possible to staff a 2,000 employee plant in a matter of months – from managers to warehouse associates, all with experience in the FDA regulation process. Great consulting firms, such as Elizabeth Plaza’s Pharmabioserv, are at your disposal should you want to run your operation with consultants rather than regular employees. Compared with the U.S., the average cost of a Puerto Rican worker in manufacturing is about 65%-to-70% less.

3. Generic Drugs. Because generics are 70% less expensive than their brand-name counterparts, generics generate annual sales of approximately $11.1 billion a year, less than 10% of the total $132.1 billion annual market, but account for 45% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S. In that regard, I cannot think of a country in which you can have a better chance of getting a generic product approved by the FDA than Puerto Rico.

4. Life Sciences. Puerto Rico has a track record of consistently delivering life science products with the highest quality standards. Some plants in fact have 99% success rate. To give an example related to quality, the Amgen plant in Puerto Rico is their only plant in the world to have passed all the FDA an EMEA audits without any observations.

Do you all know about the new Science City being developed in the Rio Piedras section of San Juan? If you do, let me tell your fellow audience members – 80 cuerdas of centrally located terrain fully available for development and only recently, just this year, opened for bids to attract the world’s leading players in R&D focused life sciences.

The district stands right next to one of the most advanced medical campuses in the Hemisphere as well as the vibrant Rio Piedras commercial and university district. So there can be no reason to believe that we won’t see Puerto Rico take its place next to the likes of the North Carolina Triangle and Singapore’s Biopolis as one of the premier R&D hubs.

All this focus on life sciences will mean even more companies, more people and more visitors to make our properties and urban districts even more vibrant and successful.

You’re hearing plenty today about Puerto Rico’s engineering population – all the graduates and college degrees per capita – the literacy and bilingualism, etc., etc. Those are important statistics, but since you’re getting them from other sources at this conference, I would prefer focus my remaining minutes on one characteristic that doesn’t show up on any chart.

It is something that is usually relegated to the merely curious and cute, but that is actually at the very heart of our human capital. I don’t think there is an audience anywhere in the world better equipped to understand it better than Brazilian entrepreneurs. So here goes:

When tourists visit Puerto Rico they are usually struck by how nice the people are – how much fun they like to have. In fact, Puerto Ricans consistently rank among the happiest people on Earth.

But just as it would be a cardinal sin to confuse a Brazilian’s great friendliness and openness for a lack of seriousness, many people have a similar misconception with Puerto Ricans.

Having said that, there is something about the people in Puerto Rico that allow them to undergo hardship with a smile. It is a kind of stoic endurance, without the bitterness or lingering resentment that often engulfs others in times of adversity.

The ay bendito culture is part of that. You’ll usually find people willing to give you a break, cut you some slack, feel your pain, Clinton style. Ayyyy, bendiiiiito – empathy, sympathy, generosity and compassion, all wrapped into one profound feeling, along with fun and having a good time among friends and family, no matter the circumstances around them.

No Puerto Rican writer ever captured that trait better than José Gautier Banitez. Gautier passed away over 150 years ago at the tender age of 35, but the great author left behind a string of poems entitled Puerto Rico.

In one of them, he recalls that the Taíno Indians were among the most peaceful and loving people on the planet, and that even after the Spanish practically killed them off and set up an oppressive regime, the people stuck to their humanity. Institutionally, Puerto Rico was dysfunctional, but the essence of the people remained unshaken – the humanity of the Taíno, the joyfulness of the Sevillian, and the salsa of the African slave.

“You retained your beauty,” Gautier wrote, “without copying from the old continent the pomp and horror of its grandeur – everything about you is bountiful and light – sweet, peaceful, uttering only kindness – neither genocide nor cruelty nor any suffering ever subverted the love in your hearts – never lashing back in revenge – showering, instead, hospitality and nothing more.”

And then he said something that applies just as beautifully today: “You are no longer an atom lost, that in seeing its smallness becomes fearful, nor a hidden garden in the vastness of the Earth. You are a people, whose voice rises, singing the virtues of the past, singing the hymn of progress yet to come.” That was written in the middle of the 1800’s.

When Stryker, the medical device giant, expanded its operations in the southern town of Arroyo late last year, their VP in charge of Latin America said that Puerto Rico ranks among their most efficient operations in the world because of the unique combination of creative talent and this happy, sociable, party-loving trait. Her direct words: “It makes them work better and innovate more as teams.” Similar comments have been made by executives from GE and many other companies about their experience with Puerto Rican workers.

So not only is human capital about a third less expensive in Puerto Rico than the U.S. – it is also more efficient and productive, because in Puerto Rico, workers and managers combine education and technical talent with the kind of happiness, positive attitude, loyalty, commitment and other soft skills you can only acquire when you grow up in a culture of joy.

I urge you to realize how powerful a competitive advantage this can be for your companies. It cuts across industries and makes us compellingly competitive in all of them – manufacturing, tourism, technology, services, finance – all of them.

And when you use Puerto Rico to expand to the United States, you can also benefit from the diaspora of five million Puerto Ricans living on the mainland and sharing this very same set of traits, and then it becomes a population of nearly nine million to use as a basis for your expansion.

So there you have it. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, part of the biggest economy in the world, with amazing people, world-class infrastructure, and a privileged location smack in the middle of the Hemisphere.

Couple that with fantastic assets at generationally low prices, iconic neighborhoods that people everywhere will dream of visiting, a government bending over backwards to help business, a tax regime that has the potential to transform Puerto Rico, and éhere can be no doubt that businesses everywhere will soon come to know the island as one of the very best places in the world in which to set up an export hub and conduct business.

Finally, it’s only appropriate that the wonderful Museum of Art in Ponce that was founded by the Ferré family, recently had a glorious romantic realism exhibit focusing on the transition from romanticism to realism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the world’s great artists realized that a profound social change was taking place. The world was transforming to a whole new era, and that is what’s happening in Puerto Rico today.

Thank very much for your kind attention.