08.30 - 10.30 CET
On the 20th January, Brand Finance attended Davos during the World Economic Forum to launch the Global 500 2026 report, revealing the world’s strongest and most valuable brands of the year. The presentation was followed by a C-Suite panel discussion titled “AI Rising: The Evolution of Brand and Trust”.
The session examined how leading brands are harnessing trust and AI to drive growth, create value, and deliver meaningful impact. Below is a summary of the key insights and takeaways from the discussion.
Brand as a Strategic Asset
Brand remains a critical driver of business growth and long-term value creation. Beyond logos or campaigns, strong brands enhance trust, reputation, and economic performance. On average, the brands in the Brand Finance Global 500 represent one fifth of total enterprise value. Stock market analysis also shows that the top 100 brands in the study outperform their peers in the MSCI World index by at least 20% on shareholder yield, return on equity and operating margin.
Trust in the Age of AI
Introducing Brand Finance’s Trust Framework, we see brands that embed trust across relational, functional, and principled dimensions and consider temporal and geographic factors are best positioned to maintain credibility. Trust is emerging as a key differentiator for brands in an AI-enabled world. Whether AI builds or erodes trust depends significantly on how it is designed, deployed and governed, with stakeholders from CEOs to employees to consumers varying significantly in their current readiness to adopt and trust AI-enabled content and experiences. Alignment with brand values, governance frameworks and ethical standards are key.
AI for Real-World Impact
AI adoption is moving from experimentation to applications that deliver measurable business and societal outcomes. Examples include:
- Enabling decision-making at scale, from inventory management to personalised customer engagement.
- Driving societal impact, such as AI tools for smallholder farmers that provide crop diagnostics in native languages and actionable advice.
- Supporting operational efficiency, including audit, tax, advisory, and cross-functional optimisation.
AI is most effective when integrated end-to-end across organisations rather than siloed, ensuring coordinated impact and maximizing value creation.
Human-Centric Innovation
AI complements human capability rather than replacing it. Its adoption relies on leadership direction, upskilling, and a clearly articulated purpose. Successful organisations combine AI with human oversight to maintain trust, prevent bias, and ensure decisions are driven by considerations of both economic value and brand values.
The Fundamentals Remain
While AI accelerates change, the core principles of brand building remain unchanged: brands must be relevant, differentiated, and guided by clear values. When applied responsibly, AI enhances these fundamentals, creating trust, driving growth, and supporting long-term value creation.
Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in more than 50 countries to navigate their digital transformation.
With over four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.
Jayesh has been with the company for over twenty years and took over as the Group CFO on 1st April 2024.
As the Group CFO, Jayesh is responsible for corporate finance & treasury, business finance, taxation and financial planning, analysis & reporting. He cultivates and manages Infosys’ strategic relationships and communications with shareholders and the investor community. He is also responsible for mergers & acquisitions, infrastructure and facilities management.
He also champions the company’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda, ensuring that ESG is at the heart of Infosys’ strategy to achieve profits with a purpose.
Prior to taking this role, Jayesh was the Deputy CFO of the company. He has played a pivotal role in the various financial transformations that the company has undergone over the last few years
Jayesh has over 25 years of experience across a wide spectrum of finance functions. He has also played variety of roles at Tishman-Speyer, Rediff.com, Mu Sigma and KPMG. Jayesh is a Chartered Accountant, Cost Accountant and holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Mumbai University, India.
Sam Burns is the Global Chief Marketing Officer of KPMG International with over 33 years of marketing experience in two of the world’s leading professional services firms and has been listed in Marketing Week’s Top 100 Marketing leaders for the last 6 years. Passionate about brand and creativity, Sam credits her success to staying curious, being grounded and retaining the commerciality instilled from a three-year stint in sales at the start of her career. KPMG was one of the first organisations to launch a Trusted AI Framework, achieve ISO accreditation for AI Management Systems and the firm’s “You Can with AI” global marketing campaign has been instrumental in positioning KPMG as a leading advisor in the AI space.
Feroz Sheikh is the Chief Information and Digital Officer at Syngenta Group, a global leader in agricultural innovation. Based in Basel, Switzerland, he drives the company’s IT and digital strategy, spearheading transformative initiatives to enhance food security, sustainability, and productivity in agriculture.
Feroz has been instrumental in advancing the company’s digital transformation, notably through the development of Cropwise, a digital platform connecting over 180 million acres of farmland worldwide. His leadership extends to Syngenta’s AI initiatives, which empower farmers with data-driven solutions.
Prior to joining Syngenta in 2018, Feroz was an accomplished entrepreneur, having founded and led multiple technology-driven ventures, securing venture capital funding and achieving successful mergers and acquisitions. He also contributed to philanthropic efforts, leveraging digital technologies to make education accessible to children in India.
As a passionate advocate for agricultural data standards, Feroz serves as Chairperson of the Board at AgGateway, a global non-profit consortium of over 200 companies driving digital connectivity in agriculture.
Feroz holds a bachelor’s degree from Delhi College of Engineering and completed the executive management program at the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode. His passion for innovation, rooted in early achievements like building a superconductor and a robotic arm in high school, continues to shape his vision for a sustainable agricultural future.
Mike is a global authority on brand economics and valuation, with extensive experience of helping businesses grow by maximising the value creation potential of their brands.
He has over 20 years of experience across a wide range of branding challenges, leading assignments on brand-led growth, brand-related cost savings, brand-based negotiations and transactions, and expert witness work for disputes.
His experience of leading teams of analysts on the evaluation of brand strength and value for the world’s most valuable brands gives him unique insight into the factors that drive brand success globally.
Prior to joining Brand Finance, Mike was the global lead for the brand economics practice at Interbrand. He has a broad range of experience across many sectors, with clients including Allianz, AXA, British Gas, BUPA, Ericsson, Goldman Sachs, Hertz, Hyundai, Kia, Mastercard, Orange, PayPal, Samsung, Standard Chartered Bank, Virgin, among others.
Mike studied Economics at Cambridge University and is a Chartered Marketer and Chartered Accountant, having qualified with Arthur Andersen in London. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, ICAEW Valuation Group and Chartered Institute of Marketing.
