REUTERS NEXT-Notable quotes from finance and markets speakers at the Reuters NEXT conference

I think you know (by) December 31, 2026, there will be less deals than people imagine." JOHN STECHER, BLACKSTONE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER "We are really looking at these tools as augmenting all of our great people," Stecher said, asked about applications of artificial intelligence.

Reuters is hosting the two-day Reuters NEXT conference in New York on Wednesday and Thursday, bringing together more than 700 international business leaders and policymakers to examine the biggest issues facing society, business and the world.

The following are some notable quotes from speakers in the finance and markets sessions of the conference. MICHAL KATZ, MIZUHO AMERICAS HEAD OF INVESTMENT AND CORPORATE BANKING

"AI is still in the early innings of its evolution, and obviously valuations have been stretched, just given the dollars going into capex and companies wanting a stake in the game. We have seen risks arise over potential overbuild, concentration among certain off-takers, and questions about whether returns will materialize. But it's early days—the story of AI is still being written. Winners have yet to be defined." UMESH SUBRAMANIAN, CITADEL CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

"We try to make sure that AI doesn't go into the land of prediction. It goes into the land of seeing today clearly." BRENDAN COUGHLIN, PRESIDENT OF CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP

"The industry is ripe for further consolidation and a lot of this tech discussion we've had is going to favor folks with more scale. There's been some M&A in 2025. There's a lot of discussion around that heating up. I think you know (by) December 31, 2026, there will be less deals than people imagine." JOHN STECHER, BLACKSTONE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

"We are really looking at these tools as augmenting all of our great people," Stecher said, asked about applications of artificial intelligence. Stecher said large language models were good at extracting information from documents and putting them together so "somebody can actually read it and decide, is this a deal I actually want to take a look at or not."

Those models are currently equivalent to "high-school level people" in their ability to make decisions, Stecher said, but they augment people's work. "It's like the Iron Man suit around everybody, every man and woman that works inside the firm, it just makes them more effective."

RICK WURSTER, CHARLES SCHWAB CEO "Our clients' wealth is at an all-time high. A lot of our clients are asking us about how to protect that wealth. Many have grown their balances beyond what they might have hoped for given what the markets have done."

"Our typical client hasn't expressed a strong need to hold the spot. They're comfortable holding the exchange-traded product and knowing that it's custody to Schwab and not in a wallet." "M&A will be something we're going to keep our eyes out for. If we can add a capability that appeals to our clients, it's going to add enormous value to the company with the size of our asset base and client base. If we acquire a capability that appeals to them, the value in that is huge."

View the live broadcast of the World Stage here and read full coverage here. (Compiled by Pritam Biswas, Ateev Bhandari, and Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Rod Nickel)

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