Asia represented 75% of global growth last year, with China and India''s rate dipping to 6% to 7%. Some expect that more than 70% of the world''s growth over the next decade will come from emerging or should I say, rapidly growing markets.

This represents a once in a lifetime secular not cyclical growth opportunity for infrastructure, including high end hotels. For us, as the world''s most global hotel Company, this could not be better news.

Today, we are already witnessing the first recovery in the post World War era where the U.S. is pulled by strength of the emerging markets and as middle classes are formed and people travel outside of their native countries, they will look to brands they know well and the potential numbers of new international travelers is staggering.

We estimate that by 2015, 400 million Chinese and Indians will have sufficient income to travel abroad. That was 400 million, seven times the number of international travelers who visited the U.S. last year.

Meanwhile, as companies globalize their operations, their demand for global branded hotels will also grow. At Starwood, for example, we recently outsourced much of our IT to India which is generating hundreds of incremental trips there.

These trends underscore why we continue to pursue a quality global growth. We are already the global leader in four and five star categories with over half of our hotel properties outside the U.S. and over 80% of our 85,000 room pipeline to be built in international markets.

Asia Pacific is far and away our largest source of future growth with 50,000 rooms in that pipeline. The majority of our signing since the financial crisis began have been outside the U.S. which we believe reflects the beginning of a long term secular growth trend. Great properties strengthen brands which sets the stage for more new hotels.

So now for my fifth and final topic. I wanted to remind you of the four financial levers and how we are creating value for our shareholders. The first lever is driving RevPar growth. Just a few minutes ago, I outlined our efforts to accelerate RevPar growth and take advantage of the bounce back we should see in our business.

The second lever is cost containment. We achieved significant cost savings over the past year and half as we streamlined the company. Having made these sometime painful changes, we are committed to keeping our lean cost structure. The third lever is pipeline growth.

Our development team is working hard around the world to reignite growth as capital markets and confidence allow. We kept our discipline, preferring to walk away unless we have the right deals with the right partners in the right places.

As a result, our pipeline as a percentage of existing rooms is still the highest in the industry, skewed outside the U.S. in the four and five star categories. The fourth lever lies in our balance sheet.

We continue to transform Starwood''s business mix to be over 80% fee driven, unlocking the value of our assets. We own or leased 21,000 high end hotel rooms and continue to test the market for asset sales. Monetizing our timeshare inventory and completing the Bal Harbour project are two more ways we can generate incremental cash over the coming years.

This transformation should generate substantial after tax proceeds that would not only allow us to pursue growth opportunities but also return large amounts of cash to the shareholders. What will remain is a large and growing fee base and franchise business which we regard as one of the best business models in the capitalist world.

Growth is generated by unit additions, RevPar increases and incentive fees. The contracts are 20 years or more, with limited capital requirements, the business is a free cash flow machine.

Let me end my prepared remarks by repeating three key takeaways. First, we are cautiously optimistic about the near term business environment. Two, we are working hard to own the upswing. And three, we are bullish about long term growth.

With that I will turn the call over to Vasant.

Vasant M. Prabhu

Thank you. Frits. And good morning, everyone. Over the next few minutes I will cover three topics. The current state of our business around the world, more color on the 2010 outlook and an update on the liquidity and leverage enhancement program.

The big story of the fourth quarter was the return of the business traveler. We exceeded our RevPar expectations as late breaking in particular corporate transient business, was stronger than we had anticipated around the world.

And the recovery trend accelerated as the quarter progressed. In North America, RevPar improved from down 11% to 12% in October, November to down 6.5% in December and down 3% in January at Company operated hotels.