It was January 2017 and tech billionaire Marc Benioff was in his element.

At a Hawaiian-themed party in Davos hosted by his $134bn software company Salesforce, cocktails were being served as the Black Eyed Peas cranked out a set.

Outside, the snow lay thick on the ground but inside a nightclub in the Swiss ski resort Gavin Patterson, then chief executive of BT, was rubbing shoulders with Google founder Sergey Brin and Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein.

For Mr Patterson, however, the fun at the World Economic Forum (WEF) didn’t last long.

Just four days later, BT’s market value plunged by £8bn as investors digested news of a massive accounting scandal at the company’s Italian division.

It was the beginning of a bubbling crisis at the UK telecom giant which ended in Mr Patterson’s dismissal less than 18 months later, after investors made it clear they had lost confidence in his ability to lead the company through an ambitious overhaul of the business.

Yesterday, however, Mr Patterson, 51, was back in the spotlight after it emerged Mr Benioff had picked him as Salesforce’s new chairman of its board for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

The new recruits

The appointment of a FTSE100 heavyweight like Mr Patterson is a bold statement of intent from Salesforce, which is banking on a big expansion in the UK and Europe as a key plank of its ambitious growth strategy.