The Next Five

It’s Q3 2026, the systems that form the global economy are currently being rewritten by the digitally led, fourth industrial revolution and the geopolitical repositioning of power. You’re an investment banker, a portfolio manager or a retail investor looking at trading screens flash red and green. There’s a hive of activity. But what to make of it.The indicators continue to flash, but the signals are conflicting.

On one side sits the bull case: real AI driven corporate revenue, strong earnings, record stock prices and the unprecedented cash flow of the Hyperscalers.

On the other side sits the bear case: historically concentrated index valuations, an ever widening gap between monetisation and infrastructure spending, and an increasingly fragile global debt landscape.It leaves you, as well as other investors, economists, and central banks asking some big questions: Are we witnessing a durable, tech-driven productivity shift? A once in multiple generation opportunity to transform individual, corporate and societal wealth? Are we re-writing the whole world economy? Or are we sitting giddy and foolishly riding a teflon-coated bubble that will soon burst?

Our host Tom Parker is joined by Jon Noble, CEO of Trade Nation, Russ Mould, Investment Director at AJ Bell and Karen Ward, Chief Market Strategist for EMEA at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

This episode was recorded on the 22nd of September 2026.

Sources: FT Resources, Harding Loevner, RBC Wealth Management, Slick Charts, Yahoo Finance, Macrotrends, OECD, AI Weekly, IMF, CNBC, IIF.

This content is paid for by Trade Nation and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sovereignty, by definition, is being updated. Sovereignty 2.0. Under geopolitical tensions, supply chain dependencies and competing regional regulations, the discussion around digital sovereignty is shaping where you're allowed to build, what models you’re allowed to train on, and who's allowed to see the results.

Competing lines are being drawn. On one side there are those calling for the democratisation of AI and opening the global doors to innovation. On another is a fragmented map of regional regulations, like the strict mandates of the EU AI Act.

Bubbling underneath is the geopolitical chess match, primarily between the US and China, turning data, frontier models and the infrastructure behind them into a matter of national security.

All of this offers up some big questions for governments and businesses. One no bigger than this: Can global enterprise innovation really survive in a world of digital borders?

Joining host Tom Parker is Stéphane Israël, Managing Director of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and Digital Sovereignty at AWS, alongside Ali Ustun, Senior Partner from McKinsey’s Middle East Office and co-leader of their global Data and AI Foundations Service Line and Dr. Catherine di Lorenzo, Partner at A&O Shearman.

Sources: FT Resources, McKinsey, NASA

This content is paid for by AWS and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re at the start of Q3 2026. Every day that passes, individuals, managers, executives and boards are crunching their internal numbers. They’re working out if the millions of dollars spent on cutting edge agentic AI deployment over the previous 2 years is showing signs of meaningful ROI. If figures from the first half of 2025 were anything to go on, the juice was not worth the squeeze. MIT’s Gen AI Divide Report 2025 showed that ninety-five percent of generative AI projects in H1 last year failed to deliver demonstrable ROI. Ninety-five percent. But, what happened to that remaining five percent? What secret engine were those elite organisations running that the rest of the market is completely missed? Is it really a gap in technical horsepower? Did they structure innovation better? Manage risk more competently? Or did they grant their teams the power to experiment more freely than the rest?

Joining host Tom Parker is Steve Tarcza, Director of AI & Developer Acceleration for Stores at Amazon, alongside Jim Rowan, US Head of AI at Deloitte and Seth Fox, Chief Technology Officer at S&P Global.

Sources: FT Resources, MIT

This content is paid for by AWS and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thirty years ago, the role of the CFO was vastly different. While they still looked ahead to build budgets, they acted more like historians, studying the past performance to manage the books, taxes and audits, but largely kept out of board level email chains. 

Today, most CFOs at the top of their game barely recognise the environment they started their careers in. They are now less a historian and more a fortune teller, sitting firmly at the right hand of the CEO and guiding big strategic discussions . AI’s predictive modelling and big data crunching makes wearing the co-pilot hat for a CFO that much more comfortable as they help navigate their companies through global risks and critical business wide decisions.

Joining the host,Tom Parker, to discuss the role of the CFO in an AI future is Patrick Villanova, CFO at BlackLine, Olya Brase, EVP of Finance Optimisation and Governance at Highgate and Gina Gutzeit, Senior Managing Director and Global Leader of the Office of the CFO Solutions practice at FTI Consulting.

Sources: FT Resources, Deloitte, Bain & Co, Founders Forum Group, Houseblend

This content is paid for by Blackline and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are living in an era defined by a new kind of power shift. It’s not only measured in borders and markets but in Gigawatts and Gigaflops.

Every line of code generated and every industrial process optimised by Artificial Intelligence is tethered to a physical reality: the Data Centre. These silent, humming monoliths have become the new cathedrals of the 21st century, and their appetite is unprecedented. How on earth are we going to be able to create and sustain the power demand of AI? 

But this isn't just a technical challenge; it’s a diplomatic powder keg. With the Strait of Hormuz slowly recovering from a blockade and the global energy market reeling from price hikes, we have entered a world of energy realism. 

Furthermore, is the machine a monster that will break our grids and stall the transition? Or is it the only navigator capable of steering us through the complexities of a changing climate and the demands of a green transition?

Joining the host ,Tom Parker, is José Manuel Durão Barroso, Prime Minister of Portugal from 2002 to 2004 and European Commission President from 2004-2014, alongside Mo Gawdat, a software engineer, entrepreneur, author, podcaster, public speaker and former Chief Business Officer at Google X, and Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, CEO of EDP, a global energy company.

This episode was recorded on July 8th in front of a live audience at EDP Headquarters, LIsbon. 

Sources: FT Resources, IEA, CNN, Brookings, CNBC, Fortune, Microsoft, CREA.

This content is paid for by EDP and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the past few years, the corporate world has been boldly surfing the initial wave of AI excitement. Boardrooms worldwide have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Artificial Intelligence, fueled by grand promises of economic revolution. We were told productivity would skyrocket, costs would vanish, and businesses would effortlessly scale.

But as the fiscal years roll over, executives are searching for the next wave of provable returns and exploring what they will need to do to catch it and surf it to the beach of productivity gains. The challenge for this next generation of technology, specifically autonomous Agentic AI, is to prove it can deliver measurable, repeatable business value at scale. But unlocking that value requires a total architectural overhaul. It means completely re-engineering the internal human workforce, and ultimately, altering how the customer experiences an organisation from the outside.

Giles Bryan, General Manager CX, NiCE, alongside Chris Herbert, Customer Service Director at Openreach and Zack Kass, Author, Podcaster, and former OpenAI Executive, join host Tom Parker.

Sources: FT Resources, McKinsey, MIT, Gartner, Guardian

This content is paid for by NiCE and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s 2026. You’re the CEO of a global bank or the Head of Surgery at a major hospital. An AI system looks at a complex set of volatile market data, or a patient’s decade-long medical history, and gives you a directive. It doesn’t just give you a percentage of probability. It tells you exactly what to do. But here is the catch: If that decision fails, "the machine told me so" won’t hold up in court, in the boardroom, or at a patient’s bedside. For a few years now, we’ve played a game of ‘black box’ roulette, using AI that predicts the future based on the past. But in a world of sudden market shifts and unprecedented global change, the past is no longer a reliable map. We are entering the era of Automated Reasoning. This is the shift from AI that guesses to AI that proves. It’s a market for explainable systems that is set to hit nearly ten billion dollars this year, doubling by 2032. Because today, leaders don’t just need an answer; they need the logic behind it. They need a ‘glass box’ they can trust. Scott Wiltamuth, Director of Software Development for Agentic AI and Automated Reasoning at AWS, alongside Mary Martin, Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG and Varun Chitkara, Senior Vice President of Global Product & Technology at ADP join host Tom Parker. 

Sources: FT Resources

This content is paid for by AWS and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 report, we've hit a historic tipping point. For the first time, CEOs now rank cyber-enabled fraud as their number one digital concern, officially overtaking ransomware. The threat is no longer about a hacker locking your files, it's about a machine mimicking your identity. But why does this matter? Well, because when trust collapses, the economy stops. If you can't verify who you're paying, you stop paying. If you can't verify who you're hiring, you stop growing. We are no longer just defending data. We are defending the very possibility of digital trust. Today we're discussing the rise of digital ghosts, the death of the voice call and the defensive technologies emerging to save our digital identities, economies and society itself. Joining Tom Parker to examine the future of fraud in our digital world are three experts, Hubert Behaghel, CPTO at Veriff, an identity verification software company, Gareth Murray, Financial Crime Senior Director at Monzo and Simon Miller, Director of Policy at CIFAS.

Sources: FT Resources, WEF, KBV Research, Mordor Intelligence, Juniper Research.

This content is paid for by Veriff and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the UN’s Secretary-General António Guterres said in July this year, “Now, we are on the cusp of a new era. Fossil fuels are running out of road. The sun is rising on a clean energy age.” Renewables and nuclear did reach an historic 40% share of global electricity generation in 2024, with renewables alone supplying roughly 32% of global power for the first time. But the length of this road and the speed we are travelling down it, will determine the success of the world’s energy transition. In this episode we explore where we are in the energy transition, the challenges, technologies and the policies. Joining Tom as guests are Elisabeth Cremona, Senior Energy Analyst for Europe at Ember, Massimo Battaini, CEO of Prysmian and María Mendiluce, CEO of We Mean Business Coalition.

Sources: FT Resources

This content is paid for by Prysmian and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The fourth industrial revolution is upon us in every way. Technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, are growing up fast. So too must the humans that deploy and use it. Evolution is usually a slow process, yet businesses around the world must quickly reconfigure the way they work to gain the advantages that technology can afford. In this episode three experts join Tom to look at the human part of tech transformation, how we are adapting to work alongside tech such as AI, and how organisations are transforming their business operations to best adapt to the current and future needs of a tech savvy workforce. They are, Natalie Douglas, CFO at Liberty Blume, Professor Ashley Braganza, Chair in Business Transformation and Founder of Brunel University’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Kevin Frechette, Co-Founder and CEO of Fairmarkit.

Sources: FT Resources

This content is paid for by Liberty Blume and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. The views and claims expressed are those of the guests alone and have not been independently verified by The Financial Times.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.