About Me:
William Lockwood-Benet is a development economist specialized in capital markets, public finance and technology strategy to support innovation in Puerto Rico. He has been a founding member of the leading economic development, technology, entrepreneurship and private equity institutions in Puerto Rico and a senior government officer and founder of several government institutions since 1981.
In 1993 he founded Lockwood Financial Advisors (LFA), a PR strategy and project execution firm serving financial institution’s corporate lending strategy, capital markets innovation and regulatory affairs, new asset management and investment advisory businesses, entrepreneurial ventures and private infrastructure investment. LFA has advised leading financial institutions, private endowments, the government and regulatory institutions on capital markets reform, mutual funds, corporate strategy, industry-specific risk management, asset management, offshore banking and new client services.
In 2000 Mr. Lockwood founded Generans Bioventures, an interdisciplinary biosciences strategy group, given the critical knowledge, innovation and fiscal need to stabilize and grow the PR pharma cluster, monitor technology, leading global corporate strategies, pipeline developments and competitors’ strategies. Generans has provided advice to leading US and European biotech and IT corporations on corporate strategy and product R&D. Generans also advised on the creation of the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust and Mr. Lockwood served as its first Chairman in 2005 and as Trustee in 2009. He has also conducted global and PR policy work on biodiversity and historic conservation finance mechanisms, global climate change, land zoning and price changes and infrastructure and environmental management in coastal areas and island systems.
During 2009 Mr. Lockwood served as the first Fiscal Agent of the Government Development Bank (GDB), and established risk management oversight of the central government, public corporations, pensions and municipalities, while overseeing all municipal bond, IRS and institutional counterparty credit and compliance and collaborating on economic, fiscal and financial affairs with the US government. During 2005 he served as President of the GDB, responsible for the management and investor relations of all public sector borrowings; the development of control measures and policies to address the central government structural deficit, the adoption of a sales tax and expand the economic development innovation and fiscal stimulus capacity of leading institutions and their senior management. From 1989 to 1993 he served as Vice President and Assistant to three GDB Presidents, responsible for telecom privatization transactions valued in $2 billion; the creation of telecom regulatory framework and perpetual trusts for education and infrastructure financing; all central government, municipalities, the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) and utilities bond issuance; investor relations at GDB’s New York Office during the 1991 recession; analysis of manufacturing, hotel and agro-industry loans; and all GDB transition affairs during the 1992 change in government. From 1987 to 1989 he served as industrial technology advisor of the Governor’s Economic and Technology Advisory Councils and as the first corporate planning and economic research vice president of the Economic Development Bank for Puerto Rico. During this period he was part of the founding team of Tropico, a tropical biotechnology innovation fund and Center for Technological Transformation, a manufacturing processes productivity and innovation center.
He is a former Chairman and Founding Treasurer of Grupo Guayacán, general partner to three globally diversified private equity funds of funds founded in 1996. Guayacán also provides entrepreneurial development programs to universities and individuals and is a founding institutional investor in Miradero Capital, a private equity group. He served as Guayacán representative in the Advisory Committee of one of the Advent-Morro private equity funds from 1996 to 2004. He has also been a founding advisor and director of the Center for the New Economy, a policy think tank.
Mr. Lockwood has been invited to attend the Annual Meetings of the IMF-World Bank, and World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group’s review of the effectiveness of private sector development programs at the Bank.
He is a graduate of Brown University’s Thomas Watson Institute and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, England, where he specialized in the financial, fiscal and industrial technology strategies of developed economies and those of Singapore, Ireland, South Korea an Puerto Rico. While at Sussex he collaborated with 3(I), Investors in Industry, the leading UK private equity group.
He is a graduate of the MIT Programs on the Pharmaceutical Industry, the MIT-Sloan Entrepreneurship Development Program, and Kellogg Business School’s Biotechnology and Corporate Finance Executive Programs. He has been trained in multinational legal and tax strategy by the US Internal Revenue Service and private advisors since 1989. He is trained in project management, decision analysis and is an investor in SmartOrg, of Menlo Park, CA. He has taught at the UPR Business School and is a graduate of the first UPR Information Technology Graduate School Seminar on Knowledge-Based Wealth Creation and Economic Development.