Press Release

Published: 27 October 2022

Gavin Patterson Elected Chair of BritishAmerican Business, Alastair Borthwick Elected Vice-Chair

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Contact: Dominic Parker, Senior Communications and Media Manager
dparker@babinc.org | 020 7290 9882 | +44 7500 115352

London/New York – Gavin Patterson, President and Chief Strategy Officer of Salesforce, was today elected Chair of BritishAmerican Business (BAB), the leading transatlantic trade organization, at its AGM.  Gavin, who succeeds Bob Garrett, former New York Managing Partner at KPMG, has spent a year as Vice-Chair and will now serve a two-year term as Chair. At the same meeting, Alastair Borthwick, Chief Financial Officer at Bank of America, was elected Vice-Chair of BAB, also for a two-year term. 

Commenting on his election, Gavin Patterson said, “The US-UK economic relationship is vital for the prosperity of both countries and for the world at large and, in many ways, this transatlantic marketplace has shaped my whole career. I am therefore delighted to be elected Chair of BAB, the organization that represents the enormous value of this corridor and the interests of all the companies that do business in and between these two great countries. I look forward to working with my terrific Board and the executive team over the next two years.”

Duncan Edwards, CEO at BAB added, “I would like to thank Bob Garrett for his two years as Chair of BAB and the decade plus of service to our Board, he has done a first-class job!  We are now thrilled to have Gavin as Chair of BAB for the next two years; he brings a remarkable breadth of UK and US experience along with superb contacts throughout business and government at the highest levels. Gavin has been a member of our Advisory Board for many years and we are grateful that he has agreed to take on the crucial role of chairing our Board. We are also excited to have Alastair as our Vice-Chair and successor to Gavin in 2024.  Financial Services is a core part of our membership and having such a senior executive in a leadership role at BAB shows the continued strength of the organization.” 

 

ENDS 

About Gavin Patterson 

Gavin Patterson is President and Chief Strategy Officer at Salesforce. In this role, Gavin guides Salesforce’s strategy as the company innovates and delivers customer success.

Gavin is a pioneer of digital transformation, as well as a champion of business as a platform for change. Before joining Salesforce, he served as CEO of BT Group, where he completed the UK rollout of Superfast Fiber and started the deployment of Ultrafast Fiber. He also led the £15 billion acquisition of mobile carrier EE and launched the digital TV channel BT Sport. Before this, Gavin held positions at Virgin Media and Procter & Gamble.

Gavin has served on boards across public markets including FTSE100, private companies, private equity-owned and AIM-listed companies including Elixirr Consulting, Fractal Analytics, and Mobileum. He is the chair of HRH King Charles’s Business in the Community charity and continues to act as an advisor and investor for several tech startups. Gavin also serves on the Board of the London School of Economics and Social Science. He graduated from Cambridge University with an MA MEng in Chemical Engineering. 

 

About Alastair Borthwick 

Alastair Borthwick is the chief financial officer for Bank of America, and is a member of the company’s executive management team. 

In this role, Borthwick is responsible for the overall financial management of the company, including accounting, balance sheet management, financial planning and analysis, corporate treasury, investor relations, corporate investments and tax.  

He is also one of the vice chairs for the company’s Global Diversity & Inclusion Council. 

Borthwick most recently served as president of Global Commercial Banking for Bank of America, a position he assumed in 2012. He led the Commercial Bank, one of the firm’s eight lines of business, which delivers integrated banking solutions to clients across Middle Market Banking; Real Estate; Healthcare, Education and Not for Profit; and Dealer Financial Services. 

Previously, Borthwick was a managing director and co-head of Global Capital Markets. In that role, he had responsibility for Equity Capital Markets, Investment Grade Debt Capital Markets, Leveraged Finance, and Global Origination for Rates & Currencies. Borthwick has also served as head of Global Investment Grade Debt Capital Markets. Borthwick joined the company in 2005, and spent the prior 12 years at Goldman Sachs. 

Borthwick is a member of the board of directors of the Posse Foundation, one of the most comprehensive and renowned college access and youth development programs in the United States. He is also a member of the board of directors of BritishAmerican Business, the leading transatlantic trade association created as a result of the merger between the British-American Chamber of Commerce in the U.S. and the American Chamber of Commerce in the U.K. 

Borthwick holds a masters’ degree in business administration from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College, and he graduated from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland where he majored in economics and statistics. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for Tuck. 

About BritishAmerican Business 

BritishAmerican Business is the leading transatlantic trade association incorporating the British-American Chamber of Commerce in the US and the American Chamber of Commerce in the UK. 

We are committed to strengthening the economic corridor between the United States and the United Kingdom by supporting policies and actions that protect and enhance the environment for transatlantic trade and investment on behalf of our members. 

We convene and serve a growing network of companies and business leaders through networking opportunities, bespoke programming and marketing platforms. 

We actively promote trade and investment and support those who make the transatlantic corridor part of their business growth ambition.