With more than 280 global executives in Hong Kong attending the 2026 Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, the market has been paying attention to what they have to say on today’s hot topics, including artificial intelligence investments, market corrections, asset diversification and the transformation of financial industries. Here are excerpts of what some of the financial industry heavyweights said during panel sessions on the first day of the summit.

Sergio P. Ermotti, UBS Group CEO Sixty per cent of global family offices we serve have an intention to change their asset allocation within the next 12 months, and the focus is not really in terms of exiting any major sector driving the economy, or [that will be] in the future, but rather going forward [with] diversification, which is … regional diversification.

Bill Winters, Standard Chartered Bank Group Chief Executive When we think about the real productivity gains from AI, and if you go back to the old innovation theories of horizon one, two, and three. We are all, I think, pretty much on top of horizon one.

When I think about horizon two, these are companies that are doing things that we are familiar with, but in very different ways, and they are getting a big lead over others. I don’t think we can say as banks that we are uniformly ahead on horizon two [and] very few people are engaging in horizon three.

Daniel Pinto, JPMorgan Chase vice-chairman I think that it could be a correction in the AI sector, but by definition, it will correct all the sectors because if someone is believing in those valuations, it’s also assuming that they are going to pay for those services and get the productivity in the time [period] that the market is pricing.

C.S. Venkatakrishnan, Barclays Group Chief Executive An interesting question comes [to light in] global financial sectors like Hong Kong, where finance is playing a role, along with a domestic financial centre, in helping a country manage these dependencies, and so the link of Hong Kong to China that we saw earlier today is very important.

Georges Elhedery, HSBC Group CEO Trade and investment flows are increasingly shifting towards opportunities within Asia and the Middle East, rather than traditionally favoured Western markets.

Slawomir Krupa, Societe Generale CEO For a bank and a bank executive, it’s the idea that the more you reduce focus in terms of business, in terms of capital allocation, in terms of risk-adjusted returns, in terms of risk management … you end up in an equation in terms of value creation, which destroys the theoretical benefits of the diversification.

Jean Lemierre, BNP Paribas chairman I think Europe has discovered that it had a business model which may be too dependent on some regional links. There has been a lot of work addressing this as the broad picture.

It’s clear that we see in Asia, from European companies, a demand for domestic funding much more than before, hedging capabilities to face volatility of Asian currencies.

Peng Zhao, Citadel Securities CEO Our ability to really know what [AI] technology will do and its revenue potential is very, very limited due to the fact that we’ve never seen anything like this before. So we lack a historical analogue to be able to predict and project to any degree that we feel comfortable with. And that uncertainty is, for sure, going to lead to a lot of errors.

Bruce Flatt, Brookfield Asset Management chair and Brookfield Corporation CEO What’s so exciting about this opportunity for really good investors is that if you can see through the huge risks that are in this and spot the opportunities, it’s incredible. And if you were on the right side of the trade, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Bob Prince, Bridgewater Associates co-CIO and chair of the board We are super bullish on AI. We think that largely the US$2 trillion is about what the markets have discounted in the AI sector, but what’s not discounted? The problem is different markets are discounting different scenarios. They can’t all be right.