DZ Bank

The European edition of the Fortune 500, ranking companies by revenue.

Fortune 500 Europe

The companies on the Global 500 employ 70.2 million people, and their revenue represents more than one-third of the world’s GDP.

Fortune Global 500

The corporations on our annual list of the world's 500 largest companies combined to generate $41.7 trillion in revenue over the past year.

The corporations on our annual list posted aggregate revenues of $41 trillion for the second year in a row.

The first-ever European edition of the Fortune 500, ranking companies by revenue. 

F500 Europe DZ Bank AG Bank Headquarters in Frankfurt

DZ Bank ranks 136 with $28.3 billion in revenue (down 31.1%). The Germany-headquartered commercial and savings bank has 29,424 employees and made a profit of $1.1 billion (down 54.1%).

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

Total revenue for the world’s biggest companies fell 4.8% to $31.7 trillion this year—the first decline in half a decade.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

G500-2020-321-DZ-Bank

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.7 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.6 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

The world's 500 largest companies generated $31.2 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in profits in 2014. Together, this year's Fortune Global 500 employ 65 million people worldwide and are represented by 36 countries.

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

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DZ BANK is one of Germany's largest banks and acts as the central institution of the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken Cooperative Financial Network, serving as the central bank for over 700 cooperative banks in the country. Headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, the bank supports local cooperative banks and operates as a commercial bank for corporate and institutional customers, both domestically and internationally. The bank operates globally.

DZ Bank Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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DZ Bank | Fortune

DZ Bank Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Moving AI from pilot to production is hard enough inside a large enterprise, let alone across a global financial system moving trillions of dollars every day. What does it take to deliver AI's value at scale when economic stability is at stake? Two financial icons discuss how they're making decisions at the center of the banking and capital markets. 

Hari Gopalkrishnan, Chief Technology and Information Officer, Bank of America 
Sally Moore, Chief Client Officer and Co-Head of Market Intelligence ,S&P Global 
Andrew Nusca, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media, Fortune 

The Trillion-Dollar Question

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Read Kristin's article:
⁠https://fortune.com/2026/09/28/heres-what-the-ai-native-org-chart-could-look-like/⁠ 
Submit your crazy workplace story to Kristin’s newsletter:
⁠https://fortune.iad1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0Oohu2KagmZwGIS⁠ 
In this episode of Fortune Daily, we dive into the unintended chaos AI is unleashing across the corporate world. According to reporting by Fortune Editorial Director Kristin Stoller, recruiters are drowning in AI-generated resumes, AI note-takers are invading the wrong meetings, and autonomous agents are spending money and making key operational decisions—completely upending the traditional org chart.
One way an employer learned to cut through AI spam? Turn its employees into influencers and pay them extra to post. Fortune’s Kristin Stoller takes Fortune Daily inside Warp: the company helping employees grow their LinkedIn and X audiences to attract talent to the management startup. 
Plus, in our Future of Work segment, Kristin joins us to break down a major Wall Street blunder: a senior Morgan Stanley banker accidentally emailed a confidential list of over 100 live deals to clients. We discuss the fallout, the viral Instagram leak, and our readers' own cringe-worthy work fails.
Subscribe to Fortune: ⁠https://fortune.com/subscribe/⁠  
Additional images courtesy of Getty Images and Destockd
IBM Computer quote: ⁠https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/⁠ 

When AI Becomes Management | Fortune Daily

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A computer can never be held accountable, therefore, a computer must never make a management decision. That could be a quote from last week's debate about the safety of AI, but actually it comes from an internal IBM training page from Wait for it. 1979. Yes, we were having these debates even then because back then, the tech industry, of course, knew that computers made work simpler. But it also knew that they couldn't be trusted to make the judgment calls that we humans can. And today, of course, we are grappling with this. Same issue. According to Fortune editorial director Kristen Stoller's latest piece, AI is running amok in certain workplaces, specifically when it comes to complex HR matters. So recruiters are drowning in AI generated applications. AI note takers are recording the wrong meeting and circulating the notes. To the wrong people, which if you've experienced it is a complete nightmare, and the org chart as we know it may be getting completely thrown out the window as AI agents start to access company systems, spend money, and yes, actually make management decisions. I'm Ellie Austin in a stormy New York, and this is Fortune Daily. Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. So I wanna pick up on a few of the issues that you have been covering in your weekly HR newsletter that you write for us, um, because we're hearing all these big promises about AI changing the workforce, but actually you've been finding that AI is stumbling, particularly in a lot of human resources matters. I wanna start off talking about hiring, so. We're hearing that candidates are using AI to write their resumes and applications, and then companies are using AI to screen applicants. How is this going and who is winning this weird AI arms race? Yeah, and the sad thing is, Ellie, I don't think anyone knows who's winning right now because it's, you're getting slop on both sides, right? You're Slop coming in slop filtering slop, and it's like what can hiring managers do to actually get quality candidates, um, so that's been the big question right now. A lot of HR leaders are trying to come up with creative ideas to still be able to use AI to help hire, but also to get to those candidates who are the most quality and you spoke to a company called Warp which is an AI. People management platform and they've come up with an original initiative. Tell us a bit about what they're doing. Yeah, so they were facing that problem. They had so much AI slop coming in they couldn't weed out who was the best and their chief people officer, she noticed that the best hires that they had recently were coming off of people who would comment on their executives LinkedIn. Loving what they posted, asking how they could get involved, and they were making great hires. So she thought, OK, what if we incentivized all our employees to post on LinkedIn, therefore we'll actually have humans interacting with our employees and getting the best quality candidates from those interactions. And do the employees, are they posting job postings or are they just posting generally about their work at the company? Good question. They're posting generally about their work in the company. It's pretty open. They're allowed to post anything from a challenge they're facing, a win their company has, or just commenting on something on the news and saying, and here's how it relates to what I do here at work at my job. And the best part is for as many times as they post, they're entered into a raffle and a lottery, and then once, I believe it's once every month or once every quarter, I can't remember, but they are, they pull a ticket and then they get $100 a couple $100 from it. And is it working for them? Are they finding that that new candidates are being funneled their way? They're, they're saying it's working really, really well. They've made thirty-ish hires all from these referrals from this program recently. They love it. The other interesting thing, which I'm not sure that I completely love, but they are offering a Cloudbot to help employees write these posts and having the Cloudbot read all of their past works and come up with something to help them post on LinkedIn. That makes me a little nervous, but they, they say it does work for them. So is AI still very much in the loop, still very much in the loop. You mentioned a bit earlier, Kristen, that when companies are opening job applications, they're being bombarded with AI slop. What does that look like in this context, because we know about AI slop online and on Instagram and things like that. What is it in the hiring process? Yeah, so what I, I believe there's a couple of different ways to look at it, but I think the most, uh, prevalent one is people look at a job. Description they'll feed the actual job description into you know Chachi PT Cloud and then say come up with a resume or come up with a cover letter and the resume and the cover letter will basically just take all the keywords and feed them all into it so it's not unique. Everyone has the same resume and the same application if you're doing that. So what are you hearing from hiring managers right now that really makes an applicant stand out for them against this backdrop? It's really, and this is not going to be a surprise to you. What makes us human, right? It's, it's the interviews, getting your foot in the door. So having those human referrals as a way into a company has always been the best way, but here it takes on a unique lens, right, because you're getting your foot in the door, you're getting a human interview, and that's where you have to shine. And I've had a lot of debates with HR people, and we've talked about this too, saying, is the cover letter dead? Is the resume dead, because if AI is generating them, who cares? And the answer is maybe because it all comes down to the human relationships. And in a way what Warp is doing is asking its employees to become influencers on its behalf, which we're seeing other companies like, you know, retail companies do as well. Um, another issue you've been writing about a lot is companies reducing their human workforce. Um, and expecting AI to take over a lot of those functions. What are you hearing about whether or not that sort of. Gradual morphing of the workforce is working. Yeah, so I, I've been having a lot of dinners and meetings with HR leaders. A lot of them are saying that narrative has kind of been in the past, you know, that was maybe the narrative last year. This year it's not so much about reducing headcount, it's more about changing roles, and I think the big thing that they're wondering is like because they're changing all these roles, it's really the entry level and the talent pipeline at the bottom that's really. Gonna be affected when you say changing roles, tell me what you mean. That means like for example if someone who is in an HR recruiting position, they used to go and have to search for people, filter people out, book interviews, do all those tasks that were really like low man on the totem pole type tasks. AI is doing all that. So now what do you do with that person? You train them to maybe go out and sit at talent or career fairs and be that forward facing person so you give them, give the. Scheduling the annoying task to AI and then push them into kind of a different type of role and you were saying about entry level jobs being particularly complex. Tell me more about that. Yes, so entry level roles, it's like because people are doing the scheduling those annoying tasks, what do you have entry level people do? A big thing people are doing right now is apprenticeships, so they come in, they do a circular kind of program within a company sitting with a lot of different functions, learning a lot of different. Things in the company and then kind of seeing where they go once they're in their 3rd year and putting them into a bigger role instead of immediately hiring them for one specific entry level role and what say does the young person themselves have over which function which department they end up in? Yeah, for a lot of companies I, I don't know that they do. That's the interesting thing and I think that's another reason why, and this is very similar to the AIDB that's happening. There's a lot of pressure on young people to go into those skilled trades. Plumbers, electricians, data center engineers, things that you can really take advantage of and make a lot of money right now, and you have more of a say in what you do, but you might not need a 4 year degree. Also there's a general, I would say like disillusionment with corporate America that we're seeing particularly among Gen Z, so I'm sure that plays into it 100%. If you were coming out of university right now trying to get a spot on the job market, what would you, having this. Sort of 30 something year old Christian knowledge and insight that you do as a result of your job, what would you be prioritizing and maybe which industries would you be lasering in on? OK, so I'd really be prioritizing from just a logistics point of view networking. It has never been more important to go to those job fairs, go to the happy hours, go everywhere where you might meet a person in person. That has been the top way I think everyone gets a job these days because it's so hard online, um, industry wise. It, it's tough because every industry is being disrupted right now from media as we know to, um, pretty, pretty much everywhere so I, I'd say. I try and remove the stigma in your mind around the skilled trades because they are, they are where all the giant salaries are for young people and for years it's just been, you know, no one's going to tell their kid go be a plumber, um, but you really should think about it and I think we as a society have to change how we think about those jobs that are really like the the pillar of society. They really are the pillar of society. Um, HR departments, I imagine, are grappling with a whole new set of weird complex situations. For example, um, AI note takers appearing in every meeting on the screen, um, often without an invitation and then sometimes circulating notes from meetings to people who should not be the recipients of those notes. We've seen, we've seen, we've seen the odd situation happen like that here, um, how are HR. Departments adapting to this kind of whole new sort of interpersonal challenges that they are now facing as a result of AI. Are they having new trainings? What does the future look like for the HR department? So in January I spoke with some lawyers who actually deal with advising HR leaders on how to deal with this, and their thought was you really should not be using an AI note taker in a meeting unless it is in. Incredibly necessary if you and I were just necessary, I think necessary is if it's like maybe a big client pitch meeting and you know that no one is gonna be staying on the call after you need detailed notes that a human just couldn't provide. But I think if it's like, you know, a regular team meeting or a one on one, if you and I are sitting in a conference room, there's no need for an AI note taker. So they are advising people to kind of audit what meetings need them and what don't and err on the side of don't if they don't. It's necessary. Got it. OK, so don't send it just because you can't be bothered to turn up to the meeting, whack your note taker in instead of you. Um, you have a part of your newsletter, Kristen, where people can submit their own questions, office-based questions. Um, how do they get, and then they're solved by a professional? Yeah, how do they get those questions to you? Yes, so I am encouraging everyone, if you have a crazy work crisis or a wild workplace story that you just need some advice on, we all do. And it's anonymous. It's anonymous. Um, you can go to my, my newsletter. It is a link there where it says submit your stories here and we're gonna put the link to the newsletter in the show notes. Thank you. That would be fabulous. Submit it online, um, and I, I welcome all of them, and I actually have HR professionals answering everyone, so it's the chief people officer or chief human resource leader, um, and if you're interested in being one, then they can also reach out to me as well to answer them. Kristen, thank you so much. Thank you, Ellie. Kristen, thank you for sticking around. So there was one other thing I wanted to ask you about. So I'm sure you saw this headline that last week, and I have to say this story made my blood run cold, a senior banker at Morgan Stanley sent an email to clients with a list of over 100 live. Deals attached, yes, uh, the banker obviously tried to recall the email. I don't believe that worked, and blurred versions of the deals ultimately ended up on social media. What was your reaction when you heard this? God, I was like you. I was just like chills. Like this is, if that happened to me, that's my worst nightmare. And I think so many employees have situations like that. I've had, I'm sure you had where I meant to send something to someone else and then I sent it to my boss. Does the recall button on emails work? I've only done it once. It worked for me once, but that is a terrifying situation. And in this day and age, anything can be screenshot. Oh my gosh, yeah, and I, I think I remember a boss saying to me, um, early on in my career, don't put anything in writing that A, you wouldn't be prepared to defend in court, and B, you wouldn't be OK with seeing posted widely on air. Yeah, um, OK, so that is a pretty massive office fail. Give us a couple of others that you've been hearing about in your newsletter. Oh yeah, Ellie, I get all the juicy stories from my newsletter. So the, the one, that I had today was someone wrote in to say that they sometimes stay late after work, and when they do, they've noticed some of their leadership going into a conference room and cracking open some beers, having some wine. Uh, frequently and you know they're a little uncomfortable. They were like, is this normal? And I think the reason they're mostly freaked out was a lot of it were HR leaders, so they were a little concerned. How do you address something when HR is the one who might be the problem. So that was interesting and you asked an HR expert for advice and give us a brief summary of what she said because also there's a question as to if it's if you're allowed to have alcohol in the workplace. Yes, so what she said, her advice, um, and this is the chief people officer of the um payments company Remote, the global um software company, she said you should first immediately check your handbook, check your company policies, see whether drinking on premises is allowed. If it is, then you really don't have too much recourse here. If it's not or if it doesn't say there's other people you could go to besides HR, right? There's the legal department, there's your own boss. There's a couple different people who could help you decide how should we approach this. But if it makes you uncomfortable, it's definitely something you shouldn't ignore. Kristen, thank you very much. Of course, thank you, Ellie. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin. Please remember to like, subscribe to the show, and if you have any office fails or questions for Kristin, HR related, leave them in the comments below this episode, and she will get back to you. Also, a reminder that you can listen to the show on Apple and Spotify. I'll see you tomorrow. Banger. OK.

Why has Effective Altruism, a philanthropic philosophy built on solving charity like a math problem, become the center of Washington's biggest battle over AI?
From major figures at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind to sharp criticism from defense officials, the movement is facing unprecedented political scrutiny. Senior AI reporter Bea Nolan joins Fortune Daily to break down what Effective Altruists actually believe, why critics claim it threatens technological progress, and what the debate over AI "doomers" means for the future of the industry.
Also on today's episode: 
• Imperia Launch: First Lady Melania Trump rings the NYSE opening bell to debut Imperia, an invite-only network designed as a "Davos for women" connecting female CEOs with global capital and dealmakers. 
• Under the Radar: Business Editor Nick Lichtenberg explores how Gen Z is building wealth with help from parents—and the economic guilt driving families to step in.

Subscribe to Fortune: https://fortune.com/subscribe/ 
Additional images courtesy of Getty Images

00:00 - Why Washington Is Targeting Effective Altruism 
01:48 - Inside the AI Doomer Debate with Bea Nolan 
11:25 - Melania Trump Launches "Imperia" at NYSE 
13:48 - How Gen Z Relies on the Bank of Mom and Dad


Effective Altruism Explained: Why the Pentagon Is Attacking AI 'Doomers' | Fortune Daily

You know, he said the administration is trying to pin concerns about AI safety and a desire for regulation on this sort of shadowy group of people that yes, has some odd beliefs to distract from the fact that AI risk is actually becoming a really real and much broader public concern. Hello from New York. I'm Ellie Austin and this is Fortune Daily. Americanism not effective altruism. That's what the Department of War posted on X earlier this month. But what is effective altruism? It's a great question, and I have to say I didn't have a clue until a day or so ago. So it turns out it's a philanthropic philosophy pioneered over a decade ago by two Oxford academics, and it's about approaching charity like a math problem. And figuring out how to save the most lives per dollar. Advocates of EA as it is known for short, include senior figures at OpenAI, at Anthropic, and Google, DeepMind. Meanwhile, the administration believes that EA is what's standing between America and global AI domination. Uh, Pete Hegseth has been particularly vocal on this subject, calling EA sanctimonious. So Fortune. Senior AI reporters Emily Fellini and B Nolan have been reporting on how a fringe movement of mostly young, highly educated utilitarians became Washington's favorite AI villain, and B Nolan is about to join me to explain more. The, hello and thank you so much for joining us from London. So I briefly explained in the intro what effective altruism is, but I also explained that I had never heard of this term until two days ago. So I think you can probably be more eloquent. Give us a rundown of what this movement is. So at its simplest, effective altruism is a philosophical movement, and it's this idea that people should try and use like rational processes to try and do the most good for the most amount of people. Actually traces back to 2009 and these two Oxford philosophers, they founded this thing called Giving What You Can, and it was a pledge that you would donate like 10% of your charity, 10% of your income to charity. Um, the idea was to treat like charity and ethics as like a math problem and you would try and figure out what causes saved the most lives or did the most good per dollar spent. Unpack that for me. So instead of spending it on a charity in the US. You could send money abroad and perhaps that would save more lives or do more good. Another big part of this that links to that is this thing called earn to give. So the idea is that you can do more good by making more money, basically pursuing a high career and then giving that income to these really effective charities. In a way it's an argument for capitalism. Yes, it's very linked to the idea of capitalism. It's also very linked to these analytical math problems, right? Like most people don't treat ethics like maths in this way. I guess the issue is it can lead you to some perhaps immoral places. So if you're trying to do the most good. You could justify a lot of things to get to your outcome, so the ends justify the means in a lot of places. Give us an example of how it could, because to me on the surface this sounds this sounds like a good move for humankind. Um, tell us how it could be used immorally or leveraged immorally. I guess it's an older philosophical problem, right? If you could save 100 lives but you'd have to personally kill one person. Would you choose to do that? Technically, EA and utilitarianism, which is what this is based in, would say that the moral thing to do would be to kill that person. OK, now imagine if that person was your mother. Would you still kill that person to save 100 others? I mean, most people would say no, and it would be ethically immoral to do that, but EA technically have taken to his extremes, would say it was immoral not to do. So you mentioned that EA was born over a decade ago at this point. Why is it finding itself in the headlines now and why has it become so woven into the debate over AI and safety? Yes, it is a bit of a wormhole, but there is, they've always been concerned with AI, and part of this is because they're obsessed with this thing called long-termism, which means when you say they, you mean advocates of EA, yeah, people who subscribe to the philosophical movement. They have been really interested in this idea that you need to protect future generations from risk, so they care a lot about things like climate change and things like that. They also were very early adopters of this idea that we've been hearing about a lot that AI could potentially wipe out humanity. Like then stopping that becomes a moral directive, right? You need to make sure AI is safe and engage in safety research and try and steer AI to be moral in order to stop it, to try and stop it trying to murder all of us. And who is our typical effective altruist? Is there a demo that you can paint for us? I don't know. I think I wouldn't want to tarp everyone who believes in this with the same brush. There are lots of different strands of it. Like some people are genuinely just interested about how they can give to charity and perhaps how they can give to charity more effectively. It's really popular in Silicon Valley because it takes on ethics with this really analytical mindset. So like I said earlier, it's like reducing these ethical problems to maths, and a lot of people who work in Silicon Valley and work in computer science like. That is the way their brain works, so they lean more towards that. Yeah, it makes sense. I think I'm right in saying that one of the early advocates of Sam Bankman Fried, the founder of the crypto exchange FTX, he is in prison now for fraud. How much does his character, his trajectory loom over and define the movement at this point in 2026? Honestly, quite a lot. He was one of the earliest adopters. He was also one of the biggest bankrollers, so he was a really good example of this urn to give. So he was like, I'm going to go start this huge crypto exchange program. I'm going to make loads of money and then I'm going to contribute it all back to charity. But obviously, as we know now, in the course of doing that, he committed a lot of immoral acts to get to that end. And then people who criticize EA use that as a very good example of how the means do not always justify the ends. Your sources in the piece suggest that this heightened anxiety around EA that we're seeing coming out of the administration at the moment is really a proxy fight and that going over EA is actually a way to discredit AI anxiety. Yesterday at the UN, President Trump described sort of the doomsday AI argument as a hoax. Do you believe that's true? What did your reporting tell you about this theory? Yeah, I mean, I think one of my sources put it like this, which I thought was a really good way to describe it, you know, he said the administration is trying to pin concerns about AI safety and a desire for regulation on this sort of shadowy group of people that, yes, have some odd beliefs to distract from the fact that AI risk is actually becoming a really real and much broader public concern. So in terms of the administration they're very keen to keep regulation off the table. So if they can blame the push for regulation and the push for AI safety on a small group of people with Outside interests like that might make sense for them. I mean that isn't what we're seeing right now in the headlines. I mean just in the general news agenda, I think it's clear that, you know, Jensen Huang is talking about the need for regulation and so I wonder how much that argument is going to hold up in the coming weeks. Um, EA is a movement that some people right now are a bit reticent to be associated with for the exact reasons that you just described. How difficult was it to get people to talk to you for your piece? I mean, interestingly, not that hard. I had a lot of people who worked in AI safety and were researchers on that and had taken money from EA affiliated charities to work on their early research, and they really wanted to make this distinction that just being concerned with AI risk. mean that you're an effective altruist. Like there are lots of people who take this very seriously as an academic issue and sort of by virtue of EA being one of the only people funding research like this, they ended up being quite involved with it, but that doesn't mean that these two things should be lumped together. There's a bit of a tension as I understand it, because on the one hand everything we've been talking about over the past few weeks on this show and beyond is that these AI companies don't care about our future. They don't care about our safety. But now EA posits that actually there's people working at high levels of anthropic and open AI and DeepMind who do really care about the future of humanity. And that's why they've chosen to go into the AI business. I mean, it's interesting. I think one of the criticisms here that might make sense is that AI gets criticized a lot for focusing way too much on these long term risks that might never actually happen. So I think you've heard people say, you know, there's a 10% AI chance AI might wipe out humanity. OK, well there's Much higher percentage chance that it might be used to spread misinformation. It might be used for mass scale hacking, and by focusing on these longer, almost sci-fi risks, they get accused of overlooking these more immediate ones, which a lot of the people in the lab, in the labs, they're very concerned with existential risk. So what actually is the outlook on regulation right now? Has anything actually shifted since Jacob Coxon resigned from? A couple of weeks ago and published that very controversial essay post. I think the main thing is, as I'm sure you've seen, we've all seen is that the public concern about AI risk has really skyrocketed and people in Congress have been responding to that. There has been a push from both Republicans and Democrats to get some regulation on the table and control some of this stuff. It doesn't necessarily mean there's going to be this slowdown that people are asking for, but maybe there's a sort of Consensus forming that having some rules around this technology if it is so dangerous wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. You mentioned um effective altruism charities a moment or so ago. If people want to find out more about this, where should they look? What are some of those charities? One of the main ones is um open philanthropy, and that later became Coefficient Giving. Um, they were founded by one of them was founded by one of the co-founders of Facebook, interestingly, so they do have deep roots to Silicon Valley. Um, yeah, you could find you they disclose their funding and where it goes, so you could look into um their disclosures around that. Um, but generally they have steered a lot of their funding towards addressing these existential risks, so you'll find effective altruists and effective altruist money popping up in lots of places when it comes to AI safety and also AI pro AI regulation. Thank you so much for explaining this weird and wonderful world of AI effective altruism to us. Speak soon. Thanks, Ellie. So that's First Lady Melania Trump ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, and the exchange is serving as the backdrop for her newly launched initiative, um, which was announced last night, and it's being framed as quote a Davos for women. So what is it? Well, it's called Imperia, and it is an invite only network for. Female CEOs and C-suite leaders with the goal of supposedly connecting the people who move capital, who make deals, and who shape policy. Here at Fortune, I lead our most powerful women summit, uh, which has been going on for almost 30 years now, bringing together women from the most powerful companies globally. And I'm often asked whether in 2026 we actually still need a business conference with only women in the room. My answer is women currently run around 15% of Fortune 500 companies, 15. Now, believe it or not, that is actually a record, but it is still a woefully low number. So yes, I believe that until leadership of the world's largest companies inches closer towards parity, we do indeed need to bring female CEOs and other senior leaders together to share insights and to Discuss the unique challenges that they still face en route to the corner office. With all of that in mind, I applaud the First Lady's intention, um, even if it is dissonant with her husband's pretty firm rollback of DEI policies across corporate America and also across the military and more. At this point, additional details on Imperia are thin, so watch this space, it will be interesting to see how it evolves, who gets involved, and whether it actually leads to concrete deal flow, to investment, and to real opportunity for a diverse lineup of female leaders. Contrary to popular opinion, Gen Z isn't giving up on building wealth. They're just leaning on mum and dad to do it, and parents are feeling guilty about the economy that they're handing over to their kids. Business editor Nick Lichtenberg has the story in Under the Radar. Nick, hello. So on Monday you went to the release of the US bank's, uh, newly released 2026 wealth report, and it's really fascinating what it showed us about, I think how Gen Z are thinking about wealth accumulation. There's this common thinking that actually Gen Z don't care about becoming rich. Um, they are out there enjoying real life experiences and big iced coffees, um, for $8 a pop. Is that true? Is that what this data shows us? No, so the, the, uh, executives at US Bank, similar to other sources I've talked to, are totally different organizations, they've said like Gen Z really is just not that different when you really look under the hood and you ask them what they want and what their aspirations are and what their strategies are. Like the economy is the thing that's different. Gen Z is, is no different from any other generation in terms of what they want. They want to build wealth and they want a good career and I had a separate report out from Boston Consulting Group saying if you look closely, Gen Z is actually doing better than previous generations did at the same age, but it just doesn't feel that way to almost anyone. By what metrics are they doing better? How do we explain that in terms of the wealth they've accumulated at a young age, but I think because We feel like iced coffee, for example, is so expensive. Like you could spend $8 on an iced coffee without realizing it. Just things feel so expensive and so the US bank executives said, I asked them actually is the bank of mom and dad still a thing? It's kind of a cliche that Gen Z, you know, they moved back in after college and they're still relying on the bank of mom and dad, and they said, yeah, that's a real thing, uh, that they track, um, and that it didn't come through. In quite these words, but one of the executives said that there's a guilt feeling that parents have about, you know, sorry we handed this economy that's so expensive over to you guys. And so how does that guilt manifest? What do they give to their children if they're able to? I think it's a lot of general spending money. Like people in their early twenties, they feel less stigma asking for this, and parents feel less stigma giving it to them. Um, that's interesting, um, and the bank of mum and dad is, is nothing new obviously. So did we millennials not depend on it? What does the data show? I mean, I feel like if you spoke to my parents, they would say it was also a thing when we were in our twenties. Yeah, I think there's, there's some of that and you know, millennials were known for burning ourselves out and for hustling too much and for being a little workaholic and Gen Z, we, we do have lots of different indicators showing that there's a different mentality around, uh, boundaries between work and life and. I would say millennials had an unhealthier sense of that. What shock does Gen Z have about home ownership, for instance? So that is the one area that everyone identified as a real problem. Like the average starter home cost is way over 350,000. I think it's close to 400,000 across the country, across the country, and That's the one area where the economy, like viscerally it feels so, so unaffordable. We have Gen Z watching. What are the main takeaways from the report and what should they be doing right now with the money they do have available to them to maybe target owning a home within the next decade? Yeah, I would say that, um, so some of the executives said Gen Z surprised them with how conservative they actually are. And I asked them if financial nihilism, which we hear about, is a real thing, financial nihilism is this phrase for Gen Z's love of cryptocurrencies and alternative investment prediction markets, meme stocks, um, even Pokemon cards, comic books, um. Really affluent Gen Zers buying dinosaur bones we hear about, uh, but I asked, is this really a thing, and the executives said, you know, at the fringes there's more interest, a little bit, but by and large, no, that is not a thing, and Gen Z wants the same thing that any generation wants and the housing market, you know, we're living longer lives. Invest wisely and conservatively and kind of pay your dues, and you will eventually get your chance to get into that. The housing market and all the other markets that adults belong to and maybe give up on the dinosaur bones. Yeah, maybe dinosaur bones maybe for a very niche niche group. Where do you buy a dinosaur bone? You know they have auctions at Sotheby's for dinosaur bones. Fascinating. Of course everyone wants the T. rex, but there's only a little bit of those. A segment for another day, Nick, thank you. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin, please remember to like, to subscribe and to let us know in the comments on our YouTube what you thought of today's topics. I'll see you tomorrow.

Asia’s shift to digital money has been swift: QR codes, super-apps, and online brokerages have fostered high levels of digital literacy and confidence among consumers. A new phase is now taking shape, as stablecoins reshape cross-border payments, central banks test digital currencies, and payment infrastructure adapts to an agentic future. The promise is faster, cheaper, and more inclusive finance—but it also raises difficult questions around security, fraud, and privacy. Two finance leaders chart the future of digital money, and its impact on consumers, institutions and global markets. 

Zhuoqun Bian, President, Ant Digital Technologies
Benson Wong, Managing Director, Head of Digital, J.P. Morgan Private Bank 
Fang Wang, Executive Editor, Shanghai, Fortune China 

Paying It Forward: What's Next in Digital Finance?

Zhou Qing, I want to start with you. Good afternoon. So and has fundamentally reshaped how people across China and Asia pay over the last 10 years. Looking 10 years ahead, how do you see the very act of paying? evolve? Will it become increasingly more invisible embedded into our daily um routines um until we no longer feel we're making transactions at all. Thanks for the question. As I'm from N Group, payment is the DNA of our business, and I'm very famous to talk about the payment. In the past 10 years, I think everybody left home need to carry a wallet. Then after that maybe 5 or 6 years ago we called it e-wallet. Maybe the phone is the is the e-wallet, but now especially in Hangzhou we when we do the payment we just put down the we we tap the machine then boom it's done. So we can say the payment ah is disappeared. We even don't know. To happen and just to just to process this so it's amazing. So, ah, let's looking forward the next 10 years, ah, we see the payment will be invisible invisible because a lot of AIOT there's a biometrics you can use your phone, watch, even your glasses. So, so it's invisible. And they, uh, it also becomes very intelligent. Maybe your agent pay the do the payment on behalf of you. You have the agent. You authorize the agent. The agent has its own wallet, e-wallet, and they have the credit line. They pay buy the things on the line with the with the authorization from your side and ah. Ah, choose the service. Let's imagine if you, ah, if you go to the, it's good to have a vacation, you needed to book the hotel, you needed to, to reserve the table, you needed to have your ticket, air ticket, the train tickets. A lot of things you need to do by yourself in currently, but after, after that, maybe in the following 5 years or maybe only 1 or 2 years, your agents, your steward agents help you do all the stuff. They match the price. They purchase the service. They do a lot of the broth. They just pick, pick the very reasonable good price. For you, it's a, it's such an amazing for a future. There was before that, ah, I have to say, ah, ah, technology need to improve very quickly. AI and the blockchain makes it happen because it's the payment is instant. It's micro. It's 24 24/7 7 days and I think AI is your agent. They, they performed all the activities on behalf of you, but still need a super ledger which is blockchain. They, they record the transaction. Even the transaction is very micro, very ancient. They record on the. on the ladder and I think the infra is AI and blockchain is the info for future payment. That's a very exciting um future we're looking at, but we will come back to Agentic commerce in a while. But I want to return to Benson. Um, you at JPMorgan Private Bank, um, you serve clients who Uh, are managing complex multi-generational wealth across borders. In that environment, how do you see AI augmenting a private banker and where do you draw the line that ensures the final relationship with your clients remains deeply human? Great, that's a great question. And, and firstly, thank you for the opportunity to be here. I, I couldn't agree more with what Duo Chuan had said in relation to AI in the context of payments and I draw the analogy if we look at and I think with technology 10 years is really far. I would just say in however cycles and events. I think we're seeing a change in private banking or frankly investments in general that has historically been more episodic, right, like unique events to something more continuous and integrated in your day to day. So historically you would just check your investments once in a while, maybe talk to your private banker once a month. Now I fully agree that things have to be more continuous. I also think that the accessing of this information is likely gonna be moving away from an atlas world and obviously products are becoming more commoditized in terms of financial products. Fully agree with the trajectory of the, the direction of where this industry is going. With that being said, I think as it pertains to private banking, where we look at differentiation, which I'll come back to why AI can't or would in the context of integration is in private banking. We're differentiated not if we're just pushing a product. If you're just pushing a product, pushing a specific thing, you're being very transactional and that's very commoditized. I think differentiation we're looking at as a business model is one where the answers are not clear cut. To the point about you have a large sale, to the point that you have complex situations, you have succession planning, these are all Trust, judgment, and access that has not been able to be replicated with technology, if you will. And so they would look at this is with AI and relationship management advisors. I don't think it's actually a replacement or displacement of it. I think it's a redistribution of labor. I think what ends up happening is that where it comes to identifying what is the best solution when it comes to thought leadership, providing access, knowing where to provide that service, that's something where that has to be something where the human gets involved. I think then that AI can help the prep work in gathering on the side before there. I also would think that just to not to be remiss, I actually do believe that AI can be in the front facing the client alongside the advisor. We actually at JPMorgan have invested and have rolled out a lot of really great directed client AI capabilities that don't have human in the middle that are reg approved. But I think the important part here is that where our clients demand something that is speed, convenient, low stake information. We should definitely let them deal with AI because that actually has served their benefit where there's trust, judgment, complexity, then those things should definitely be something enabled through digital and managed by a human by a trusted advisor in that contract. It sounds to me that AI is not replacing trust, it's just reallocating it. So, uh, Zhou Qing, let me come back to you, um, more on agentic commerce, uh, that is coming to us. So as AI agents, um, are not just doing recommending, uh, products, um, services. To us, uh, they start to actually purchase, book and pay on our behalf. I wonder what does this mean to merchants and banks, uh, what kind of preparation and technology they have to deploy so that they will eventually one day start to deal with algorithms as their counterparts. Ah, it's a, it's a good question. Um, we are talking about economy, agentic economy, we have to say, ah, actually we are experienced that just like I mentioned in the we are looking forward the the payment may be the payment between the agent agents. We call the agentic payment. Ah, the, the, it's the version we are experienced, but ecos is still needed to catch up or I have to say that the eco ecos had to be replicated this kind of changes. And then when we talk about the ecos, we have to to to reference to ah financial institutions, financial systems, compliance and the regulator and enterprises. All those stakeholders are the ecos participants. So, ah, to from ah from ah a financial institution perspective. Ah, when we initiate the transaction, we have to do the KYC, know your clients, but in the, ah, aging, aging economy, we have to say you need to know your agents. Who's the agent you you you belong to or you get ah properly authorized or you, you, when you, when the agent does things in your mouth, who takes the responsibility. So all these things. to from human to agent. So the technology, especially for new new new agents, 24 hours, 1010 24 hours in the 7 days instant, all the infra need to be improved or rebuilt. The in the in the past few years, all the infra are built for humans, but looking forward. All the infra needs to be rebuilt or enhanced to aging because all the participants may be human, may be aging. You need to know to your to know your agents much more than know your customers. I think it is very important. Technology may technology needs to provide this kind of service to the to the financial institution and the regulatory systems. I said from the it's it's from the financial perspective, but from the enterprises perspective, ah, every company, every business goes to the go to the place that your customer spend the time. 10 years ago maybe website and 5 years ago maybe app. Now you may go to the aging marketplace. So from end of end group or NDT we provided this kind of service to to bring the tech to bring the enterprises the know-how, the skills into Agentic service that agents can find your service through agent marketplace and how to skillize or agentize your business into agent and could be find through the market. So I think it's very important from from from the enterprises prospective they need. to join this kind of the innovation and skills life. They are know-how skills life, their database and make the business into agents and could be find easily find friendly find by other agents. OK, so, ah, Ben, you run a very tight ship on compliance and security, um. So how do you think about AI agents inside that parameter? Um, are AI agents coming to high value payments too? I, um, I, I, I don't know if there's any regulators here, but I just wanna say yes I do run a tight ship, um, but I think, I think the reality of it is that it comes to agents we're all moving away from the pilot phase, so I think a lot of organizations do have some sort of agentech workflow agents if you will, but I think at the end of the day we've never or I personally have never come across a situation where the technology of an agent failed us or rather led to an undesirable outcome. I think at the end of the day it's always around the operating model, the processes, and the compliance, the controls, if you will, and I think the challenge that with Agentech workflows where it's vastly different is if you ask an agent a harness, whatever it is, you ask it an information seeking question. If you answer wrongly, it's not good, but you have an embarrassing moment. If you don't get agentic workflows correct, there are much more vastly scaled impact as that way. And I think that's something at JPMorgan, which we're very intentional about, which is the tone from up top. And I don't mean just the culture of embedding AI. I think that's a given. I think it's actually our intentionality as it pertains to making sure that our infrastructure and processes allow for it. So again, when I use the word infrastructure, people tend to talk about technical infrastructure, data infrastructure. Obviously data has to be clean. Data needs to be in one resort. All those things are given. But even simple things like thinking about, OK, you have 10 different workflows. One of them is agentic, 2 of them are sort of not agentic, semi-aggentic, etc. The whole ecosystem that was mentioned before falls behind and so there's an importance for us to not only get the technology right. The orchestration right and as mentioned before, the governance look, protecting our clients, protecting our clients' wealth, protecting our clients' data is paramount, and I think it's very important that in a gente world all practices of here's a workflow, approve it needs to go away. We're very intentional to have either hired or retrained anyone from legal risk compliance to our technologists to our operations to have a. Workflow by design in all their DNA. So yes, it's automated, but is it explainable? Can you actually be audited? Can you actually explain it? These are all things we've actually gone back. So I think in that context, agentic payment is a very, very important part, but I think it's the journey to help us get to something as high value. All these different steps are things we've done in place to help position ourselves to get there. Mhm. So it sounds to me that uh BNS is. the roads, but Benson JPMorgan is more mindful of the traffic lights. So talking about roads, we're changing gear a little bit. So and has long championed financial inclusion using technology to bring financial services to those previously outside the financial system. In the age of AI, do you see these more technological tools narrowing the access. Um, gap further or will, um, actually, um, technology as some people are worried, uh, actually widen the gap. I think technology is definitely um bridge the gap because yes just as you mentioned, inclusive is our DNA of our business as well and you can imagine that especially JPMorgan is quite it is a private bank and I don't think a lot of people can have their service. Ah, I don't, I cannot say it's expensive, it's reasonable, but a genetic economy aging AI can make this kind of service much more inclusive, much more accessible to to to to people. They are not so wealth, they are, but they still need this kind of service, financial service, insurance service, hair hair care, legal service. They now they can have their agents. They can, they can let their agents uh find the proper service in a very efficient way. Would it be costly for each of us to get an agent? Uh, and I cannot say it's, it's reasonable or less expensive. Because you, you can have your, your service by the agents through the agents. Ah, maybe, maybe in the traditional ways, the service may cost thousands of dollars in a few weeks, in a few weeks, and the result is good. But, ah, but I think normal people maybe not they cannot afford that. They just needed the opinion. They need to just need the information. They just needed the service they can affordable. I think AI can do that. I think so the technology before that. As quite a bridge the difference, bridge the, the, the, the gap. It's it's, it's, we can see, uh, AI and the kind of the, the technology, uh, bring the service, bring the financial services to the normal people. When will the moment arrive when each of us will have our own agent doing all the banking and buying and purchasing and transaction for us? When do you see that day coming? I think it is as soon as possible. I, I believe that. So Benson, AI can make sophisticated insights available to more people, which is another sort of aspect of uh inclusion. But JPMorgan is a private bank. Um, how do you use AI to broaden access without diluting the quality of your service? Thank you. And, and I do wanna, I would agree that our fees are also very reasonable. So, so thank you for that. I I, I think there's a couple of different things. I, I like the analogy, and, and I've always said this before, where the technology is always gonna progress and it should. Innovation should never stop in that way. I think the intentionality around the usage of that technology, how we guard around it is what's really key here. And so for example, a lot of times private equity is something that used to be lack of access. Now it's commoditized, but that doesn't mean that everyone should buy private equity without understanding the checks and balance suitability in that way. And I think as it pertains to financial inclusion, at least from a private bank perspective, that hasn't changed our mentality in that way there. I think the way we look at inclusion as it pertains to clients who need private banking levels of service, I think we've leveraged AI and digital and technology to actually widen people who can engage with us as early as possible. So historically in a lot of private banks, what ends up happening is you have to actually become a client before you get access to a lot of information, get to see what it's like. We've actually recently launched a prospect portal which actually allows people who are not clients yet to actually start having access to our thought leadership, to actually start seeing what it's like in terms of our capabilities, our advice, understanding their portfolio, and that's two things that again for those who want a private bank, they can experience the JPMorgan experience, but equally for those who are not yet but soon to be on their liquidity journey, it's a great access point. I think the second thing I would also say is. The traditional private bank context is you have multi-generational wealth, you have a single decision maker, and usually that single decision maker decides everything. I think with technology and AI, I think the other people and decision makers around that generational wealth, be it the next gen, etc. will have better access. Transparency and ability to get started earlier on the way there. And sorry, last but not least, I would also say that the cost of providing these type of services is going down even though the human element is still there. And so it does allow us to venture to an economic threshold that might be lower than what currently is there, which again includes includes or rather promotes inclusion, but again still ensuring the right guardrails and the right services for our client segments. So the the product you just mentioned, it's like a. Uh, we don't need to be, uh, like ultra high net, uh, I, I think, um, individuals to enjoy absolutely. I think it's, uh, I think it's also by invite only, but I think it's one of those things where instead of relying in the old school pitchbook PowerPoints, PDFs, there's a digital way for people to engage and know what feels what it's like to be a JPMorgan private bank client. I think that's really what people expect nowadays, right? So, uh, whether in the future we'll be dealing with agents or human bankers. I think the task ahead is to build a system that is faster, smarter, more inclusive without losing sight of what makes finance work in the first place, which is trust. Thank you very much. Thank you for this wonderful and insightful conversation. Thank you.

DZ Bank

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DZ Bank in Fortune Rankings

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