Shaping the Next Era of Global Growth: Nasdaq Leadership Insights from IMF–World Bank Week

As policymakers, business leaders, and investors gathered in Washington, D.C. for the 2025 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this October, Nasdaq leaders joined key conversations on how to strengthen the foundations of global growth. From navigating market uncertainty to expanding financial access and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, the discussions reflected Nasdaq’s central role in building resilient, inclusive, and technologically advanced capital markets around the world.

A Forward-Looking Market, Fueled by the AI Revolution

At the Debate on the Global Economy: Shaping Economic Policies Amid a Shifting Global Landscape, Nasdaq Chair and CEO Adena Friedman joined a panel of central bankers and global financial leaders, including President of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, to discuss the outlook for growth, inflation, and investment. Friedman highlighted how today’s markets reflect a mix of investor optimism, structural transformation, and capital reallocation — particularly as AI emerges as a generational technological shift.

She pointed out that since the beginning of 2024 until today, while the Nasdaq 100 is up 47%, the earnings of the companies that comprise the Nasdaq 100 are up 32%.

“I actually would say that I think investors have done a good job of synthesizing everything we’ve been talking about here and demonstrating it in the markets,” Friedman added. “Investors are there to predict the future, and they definitely predict a bright future.”

Friedman underscored that many of the forces driving today’s markets — the AI revolution, shifts in labor productivity, and more — are also reshaping the global innovation economy, making it even more important for regulatory bodies to intentionally build pro-innovation ecosystems and expanding the number of places where that’s possible.

“We’re seeing more and more people thinking differently in terms of what they can do with their own economies, how they can spur their own growth; how they can collaborate and cooperate across borders in ways that weren’t before,” she said. “I think, in the end, that will result in a stronger world.”

Friedman highlighted Sweden, with its population of about 10.6 million people and a vibrant capital market as an example of how what she referred to as “a whole policy regime that encourages private investment” can expand economic opportunity.

She called out a range of Swedish policies, including financial literacy programs, low-tax savings accounts, locally investing pension systems, and more, as contributing to Sweden’s dynamic innovation economy.

According to Friedman, “every country has the potential to have a vibrant capital market — you don’t need to be an enormous economy to achieve that.”

Harnessing AI’s Transformative Potential

Looking ahead, Friedman said that artificial intelligence stands to be one of the most consequential forces shaping both markets and economies.

“It’s an incredible technology,” she said of AI. “I do think it will achieve a lot of incredible productivity gains over time. And with that level of transformation from this incredible capability that’s on our doorstep, we have to move to a time of agility and adaptability.”

Nasdaq itself has been investing heavily in AI capabilities to strengthen market integrity and efficiency. Its AI-driven surveillance and compliance tools are helping market participants detect anomalies faster and manage risk more effectively. These advances, Friedman said, illustrate how technology can enhance — not replace — human judgment and institutional trust.

Expanding Access to Capital for Emerging Markets

In a separate fireside chat titled Expanding Access to Capital for Emerging Markets, John Zecca, Nasdaq’s Chief Legal, Risk and Regulatory Officer, explored how financial infrastructure and trust can unlock inclusive growth around the world.

“Building trust in the soundness of the system and the infrastructure is critical,” he said. “If you want to have microfinance support the unbanked, you need the capital markets that will support that — and to do that, you need technology infrastructure that they trust and recognize. That’s what we do, and that’s how you start to build that virtuous cycle.”

Zecca described how Nasdaq’s technology powers more than 135 marketplaces across six continents, providing the backbone for local innovation and financial inclusion. In emerging economies, that infrastructure enables local exchanges and institutions to modernize, deepen liquidity, and connect to global capital flows. He also credited AI, digitization, and market modernization as some of the key forces building trust — and through it, economic opportunity — in emerging markets.

“We’re witnessing the next generation of technology, and that will factor into the trust factor. AI and some of the tools we’ve developed there are designed to combat financial crime and build trust, and that’s a huge stepping stone toward building developing markets.”

But growth, Zecca said, doesn’t just happen by itself — it requires particular conditions in order to succeed.

“You need guardrails, you need the trust factors, you need expectation-setting because the government can’t do all of it by itself — and when you don’t have those, investors are forced to pay a risk premium.”

Nasdaq’s surveillance and anti-financial-crime technologies, Zecca said, help protect vulnerable populations from fraud and abuse, while its compliance and regulatory reporting tools allow institutions to meet evolving obligations securely and efficiently.

The Future of Finance: Digital Assets, AI, and Modernization

Rounding out the week, Tal Cohen, Nasdaq’s President, joined a Views from the C-Suite session at the Institute of International Finance’s Annual Membership Meeting. His discussion focused on how digital assets and AI are reshaping the architecture of global finance.

Cohen highlighted the promise of tokenization — the process of representing traditional assets like equities or bonds on distributed ledgers — as a way to reduce settlement friction, improve transparency, and extend access. Nasdaq recently filed with the SEC to enable trading of tokenized securities under existing market rules, to ensure that investor protection and regulatory harmonization remain at the forefront.

Turning to artificial intelligence, Cohen described how Nasdaq is applying AI to enhance operational resilience and protect market integrity. He focused on Nasdaq’s new Agentic AI workforce — how it is automating tasks and compliance processes to ease the burden of manual and repetitive work, improve detection rates, and increase efficiency in the fight against financial crime.

Shaping the Next Era of Global Growth

Across all three discussions, a consistent theme emerged: resilient markets are the foundation of resilient economies and resilient countries. Whether through technology, trust, or transparency, Nasdaq’s leaders underscored the company’s role in helping markets adapt to new realities and unlock opportunities for more participants around the world.

Information set forth in this communication contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Nasdaq cautions readers that any forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and that actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to (i) the results from Nasdaq’s investments in, and use of, AI, (ii) the impact of tokenization and effect of Nasdaq’s pending rule filing related to tokenization, and (iii) other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties or other factors beyond Nasdaq’s control. These factors include, but are not limited to, Nasdaq’s ability to implement its strategic initiatives, economic, political and market conditions and fluctuations, geopolitical instability, government and industry regulation, interest rate risk, U.S. and global competition.