Barely a year out of bankruptcy, Puerto Rico’s top officials are descending on Wall Street in an attempt to convince global investors that the Caribbean island — long battered by hurricanes and fiscal mismanagement — is open for business, Bloomberg News reported. Hundreds of bankers, investors and developers are expected to gather in downtown Manhattan on Thursday and Friday for a conference, dubbed PRNOW. Attendees will schmooze with officials — including Puerto Rico’s Governor Pedro Pierluisi and New York Governor Kathy Hochul — at Cipriani Wall Street, the former home of the New York Stock Exchange and a Manhattan landmark that boasts sweeping Greek revival architecture and 70-foot-high ceilings. The conference will reacquaint Wall Street’s institutional investors with Puerto Rico and allow the territory — now flush with federal reconstruction money — to flaunt its recent achievements, including upswings in tax revenue, economic activity, tourism and employment. Those successes were hard won after the island in 2017 began the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history just as it was hit by Hurricane Maria, one of the most destructive storms to ever touch U.S. soil. A federally appointed oversight board has been controlling Puerto Rico’s finances since 2016.
