Molson Coors shifting North American HQ to Chicago

The company also plans to cut 400 to 500 jobs as new CEO Gavin Hattersley faces declining or flat sales of refrigerator staples like Miller Lite and Coors Light.

Chicago is gaining another corporate headquarters.

New Molson Coors CEO Gavin Hattersley announced broad corporate changes today, planning to eliminate 400 to 500 corporate jobs in North America, retire the MillerCoors name and shift the North American Molson Coors headquarters to Chicago from Denver.

Hattersley, who replaced retired CEO Mark Hunter in September, faces declining or flat sales of refrigerator staples like Miller Lite and Coors Light.

U.S. sales to wholesalers fell 6.2 percent in the three months ended in September, according to third-quarter results released today. In the first six months of this year, Chicago-based MillerCoors accounted for about two-thirds of Molson Coors’ sales.

“Our business is at an inflection point,” Hattersley said in a statement. “We can continue down the path we’ve been on for several years now, or we can make the significant and difficult changes necessary to get back on the right track.”

The changes, which target $150 million in savings, include streamlining into two geographic business units: North America and Europe. Previously, the brewer had four divisions: MillerCoors in the U.S., Molson Coors Canada, Molson Coors Europe and Molson Coors International.

Since 2008, Chicago has been the home of MillerCoors, created upon the combination of SABMiller and Molson Coors Brewing.

Molson Coors, currently based in Denver and Montreal, said it would “invest several hundred million dollars to modernize” its Golden, Colo., brewery.

In his former role as CEO of MillerCoors, Hattersley attempted to reinvigorate classic MillerCoors staples like Miller Lite, Keystone Light and Milwaukee’s Best. Competition from craft beers and the emergence of hard seltzers have cut into the traditional light beer business MillerCoors is known for.

“As the world around us rapidly changes and the nature of competition intensifies, our business performance is lagging. We’re over-indexed in declining segments, our core brands have seen years of volume losses, and we haven’t had the resources needed to fully invest behind our innovations,” he was quoted as saying in a blog post on the company website.

Besides hard seltzer and other flavored alcoholic beverages, Hattersley said the company must take more risks, including drinks outside of the mainline beer business, such as hard coffee and canned wine.