Maurice Button, Chief Executive, City & Financial Global

Vivienne Artz OBE FCSI (Hon) CMgr CCMI AIGP, Chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Advisory Group of the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange 

Lord (Chris) Holmes of Richmond MBE

Sovereign AI and National Security

Alex Shandro, Partner, Global Head of AI Advisory, A&O Shearman 

How UK regulators and government are supporting AI innovation - latest developments and challenges. Balancing artificial intelligence regulation and technological innovation globally

Keynote address – theme tbc

Anulka Clarke, Director of Engagement & Insights, Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) 

Keynote address - Building Trust, Enabling Innovation: How Data Protection Supports Responsible AI Adoption

AI is moving rapidly from testing to deployment across the economy, creating significant opportunities for innovation, productivity and public benefit. At the same time, in order to realise those opportunities, organisations need clarity about how to use AI in ways that maintain public trust giving people confidence in how AI uses their personal information. William Malcolm will explain how the ICO is supporting responsible AI innovation through practical guidance, innovation sandboxes, regulatory engagement and cross-regulatory cooperation. He will highlight recent developments in the ICO's work on automated decision-making, foundation models and emerging systems such as agentic AI, and the importance of trust, and principles like transparency and accountability as foundations for sustainable AI adoption. 

William Malcolm, Executive Director for Regulatory Risk and Innovation, ICO

Keynote address - Balancing artificial intelligence regulation and technological innovation globally 

AI regulation has been talked about by governments for nearly a decade. This presentation will provide an overview of the complex picture of AI regulation as it stands today and will signpost some of the key state and national regulations to focus on. It will touch briefly on the impact of the EU AI Act, but mainly reference key US states, China, Vietnam, South Korea, Australia, Japan & the UK.

Tim McGarr MBA, Global Head of AI Market Development & Partnerships (Regulatory Services), The British Standards Institution

AI presents significant opportunities, but it also introduces new legal, regulatory and commercial risks. In this keynote, Mark will discuss the key considerations for organisations adopting AI services, including contracting, governance and risk management, and provide practical steps to support responsible AI deployment.

Moderator

Mark O'Conor, Partner and Managing Director Sectors, Data & AI, DLA Piper LLP

A Central Bank’s AI Transformation: Governance, Risk and Opportunity in the Era of Agentic AI

THIS SESSION WILL BE HELD UNDER THE CHATHAM HOUSE RULE

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in financial services, regulators must decide not only how to supervise institutions that use it, but also how to harness it themselves. In this fireside discussion, David Rundle of BCLP will discuss with Jem Davis how the Bank of England is exploring the use of agentic AI, the opportunities such technologies present for modern supervision, the governance challenges associated with increasingly autonomous systems and consider what responsible AI adoption looks like in a critical public institution.

Host

David Rundle, Partner, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP

Guest

Jem Davis, Chief Compliance Officer, Bank of England

Convergence versus divergence in global AI regulation: does it matter

Fireside chat – Update on The EU AI regulation

Hosted by

Catharina Glugla, Partner – AI Advisory, A&O Shearman

In conversation with

Kai Zenner, Head of Office and Digital Policy Adviser for MEP Axel Voss (EPP group), European Parliament

Keynote address - Fuelling the ecosystem: How modern AI regulation drives investment and tech growth in Abu Dhabi. Crafting progressive frameworks to accelerate emerging technologies and capital deployment

Lawrence Paramasivam, Senior Executive Director, Policy & Legal, Financial Services Regulatory Authority, Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) 

Keynote address - Update on AI regulatory developments in the U.S.

Speaker to be confirmed

Filip Jakubowski-Drzewiecki, Co-Founder, CEO and CTO, Hooko.ai 

Deep dive into the implementation of the EU AI Act

Moderator

Gareth Stokes, Partner and Global Co-Chair, Technology Sector and AI Practice, DLA Piper LLP

Panelists

Tom Duff Gordon, Vice President, Head of EMEA Policy, OpenAI

Sarah Johanna Zech, Head of Global Privacy Advisory & Data Ethics, Allianz SE

Stephan Geering, Chief Privacy Officer, Instructure  

Monika Tomczak-Gorlikowska, Global Head of Privacy, Digital and AI Governance, Prosus Group 

Agentic AI Commerce and Payments

THIS SESSION WILL BE HELD UNDER THE CHATHAM HOUSE RULE

Moderator

Vivienne Artz OBE FCSI (Hon) CMgr CCMI AIGP, Chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Advisory Group of the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange 

Panelists

Nikki Johnstone, Partner - Fintech, Payments and Crypto, A&O Shearman 

Evie Kyriakides-Stenhouse, Data, Ethics, AI, Privacy & Compliance Leader; Chair, BSI/ISO IST/40 Data Management Committee

Apurv Bhatnagar, Vice President, AI Advisory & Commercialisation, Mastercard 

Vivienne Artz OBE FCSI (Hon) CMgr CCMI AIGP, Chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Advisory Group of the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange  

Roundtable A - Responding to the AI Revolution: what can we learn from past digital transformation 

• Moderated by Rafi Azim-Khan of BCLP, the session will focus on the potential pitfalls and risks to businesses, under pressure to adopt and implement AI products, services and solutions quickly. 
• Azim-Khan will channel the discussion by drawing on his experience of working with Silicon Valley companies for over 25 years, from the dot.com boom through "e" and "m" commerce growth, big data and adtech, to AI today. 
• The session will explore what lessons can be learned from costly mistakes made in previous digital revolutions and offer some practical tips for how companies can implement AI safely and compliantly, including from a data protection perspective. 
• Rafi will be joined by Anulka Clarke, Director of Engagement and Insights at DRCF, who will provide an invaluable regulatory perspective on the topic of digital transformation projects and AI implementation. 

Hosted by

Rafi Azim-Khan, Partner - Global Head of Digital & Emerging Technology, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP

Guest 

Anulka Clarke, Director of Engagement & Insights, Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF)

Roundtable B – The practical legal and strategic implications of data and AI sovereignty 

• Since the European Commission published its Tech Sovereignty Package and the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) in June 2026, Boardroom conversations on data and AI sovereignty have accelerated and General Counsels and digital leaders are increasingly being pulled into them unprepared. Digital sovereignty is fast becoming a top investment priority, driven by shifting geopolitics and a wave of new legislation. IDC data suggests that by 2028, 60% of organisations with digital sovereignty requirements will have migrated sensitive workloads to new cloud environments to reduce risk and increase autonomy. 
• This session will be a conversation, bringing together participants to explore the practical implications of this shift: Why is digital sovereignty rising up the agenda now? How might it reshape vendor relationships, cloud strategy, and cost? What should boards be asking, and who owns this conversation internally? As well as the practical steps organisations should be taking today to prepare, regardless of sector or size?

Hosted by

Janine McKelvey, Co-Founder, Women in Law & Data, Advisory Board Member, PICASSO

Guest

Andrew Joint, Partner, Simmons & Simmons 

Roundtable C - Who Signs Off? Accountability and Liability in the Age of Agentic AI

Framing: As autonomous agents move from copilot to greater independent execution, existing regulation was largely written with human decisionmakers in mind. This session interrogates where legal and regulatory accountability actually sits when an agent — not a person — makes the call. 

• Locating legal responsibility: Examines where liability actually falls when an autonomous agent — rather than a human — initiates or executes a decision, testing how existing frameworks built around human decision-makers hold up in practice. 
• Regulatory gaps and mismatches: Surfaces the specific places where current law and regulation assume a human "signs off," and probes what breaks down (or remains ambiguous) when that assumption no longer holds. 
• Chain of accountability: Unpacks how responsibility might be distributed or shared across the actors involved — developers, deployers, operators, and end users — when an agent acts with greater independence. 
• Standards for oversight and control: Discusses what degree of human supervision, sign-off, or intervention capability should be expected or required as agents move from "copilot" to more autonomous execution. 
• Practical and policy implications: Considers what new rules or industry norms may be needed to close the accountability gap, and what near-term steps regulators or organizations could take. 

Hosted by

Marina Antoniou, Global Markets Head of Market Abuse Risk Assessment, NatWest Markets & ICAEW Financial Services Faculty Board Member