Ruth Patterson

Ruth Patterson has been vice-president and managing director of HP Inc. for the UK and Ireland since 1 February 2025, reporting to Neil Sawyer, who runs HP’s Northwest Europe market. She has spent about 30 years at HP, and her last role before the move was vice-president and category lead for its Advanced Compute Solutions division. As IT Channel Oxygen reported, she started at HP’s Bristol site in 1995 and spent more than 20 years in US-based global roles before coming back to run the UK business.

Partners first, on the record

Patterson has made the channel her public theme. Three months into the job, she told MicroScope she had met multiple partners every week, and that the one word she would use for the mood was “opportunity”. In an August 2026 interview with Fortune she described her 2026 focus as working “closely with our channel partners and our customers”, adding: “I always say their success is our success.”

She told Fortune the number she watches is how often she gets in front of customers, forums and government or industry bodies, so that she can carry what she hears back to HP’s global business units.

More revenue from PCs

HP reports group figures rather than UK ones. In the three months to 31 July 2026, HP’s net revenue rose 12.5% to $15.7bn (£11.7bn), and Personal Systems revenue grew 18% to $11.8bn as HP sold higher-value machines.

Patterson told Fortune that, through component shortages, HP had worked with customers “to make alternate choices”, which meant speeding up some qualification processes, and that the trade-off her team had accepted was “speed versus perfection”.

A new channel team

Patterson has also changed her channel leadership. In July 2026 Mark Davitt, who had run HP’s UK and Ireland retail channel for five years, replaced Neil MacDonald as channel director, as reported by PCR. MacDonald moved to run HP’s commercial channel business in the US.

Why it matters to the channel

HP’s pricing, allocation and program decisions reach a large part of the UK’s device and print channel, which gives her partner-first message weight with UK resellers.

Patterson has spent her first 18 months putting partners at the center of HP’s UK business and carrying what she hears back to HP’s global business units.