David Newns

The advent of distributed ledger technology (DLT) is transforming capital markets across the board, from enhancing liquidity across asset classes to enabling instant settlements and powering smart contracts, while artificial intelligence (AI) analytics promise to provide better insights into market risks and opportunities.

Traditional institutions, alongside fintech players, are increasingly playing a role in this transformation, leveraging these technologies to develop innovative solutions that can improve financial processes and identify new opportunities for institutional investors.

This session will gather leaders from exchanges, banks, and digital assets players across the US, Europe and Middle East, to share how technology is reshaping the landscape of capital markets; the emerging opportunities that new technologies and approaches are unlocking within capital markets; and their long-term projections for what the future holds for capital markets.

Governance, the Architecture & Standards for the Digital Economy: Striving for international connectivity and trust in a fragmented world.

How can governments act locally but support global interconnectivity and the development of the digital economy? What standards, conventions, or infrastructures do we need to adapt or create to enhance access and empower citizens and companies to participate on equal footing in the global digital economy while addressing risks and protecting sovereignty?

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is frequently highlighted as a game-changer for financial market infrastructure (FMI). Yet, despite numerous pilots, proofs of concept, and even some production deployments, it has (yet) neither replaced nor fundamentally transformed today’s financial markets. Rather, DLT has remained limited to niche applications.

Which key elements are still missing, or are insufficiently mature, to enable DLT to truly reshape FMI? Is the main hurdle the current regulatory framework, or do challenges around standardization, interoperability with legacy systems, scalability, governance, and proven use cases with sufficient value bear the greatest responsibility?