Beer Marketer's Insights - MSJ to Depart MC; No More Americas Commercial Org as Rahul Moves Fast to Set Up New Leadership Structure

Just a couple weeks since MC appointed Rahul Goyal as co's next ceo, MC announced that cco Michelle St. Jacques will be leaving the co effective Nov 14, according to 8-K filing. Severance agreement has yet to be finalized, per filing, showing that Rahul is making moves fast to signal changes comin' for MC more broadly. This is part of MC's new leadership structure Rahul shared with distrib network this morn, "effective immediately," that also will "unwind the Americas Commercial organization" and "give marketing, sales and commercial capabilities a direct line to the ceo." Together, these decisions essentially unravel the corporate structure set up just over 2.5 yrs ago that moved MSJ up from US cmo to cco of the Americas and led to other restructuring including departure of Pete Marino, dissolving the emerging growth biz unit. "In speaking with Michelle St. Jacques about this new structure, we mutually agreed there wasn't the right role for her given her experience and skills," and she agreed to stay thru Nov 14 "to support a smooth transition," Rahul added, praising her for helping transform the co over the last 7 yrs.Now cmo Sofia Colucci and cso Brian Feiro will join the leadership team and report directly to Rahul with Sofia gaining "expanded oversight" on innovation, field marketing and media teams and Brian gaining purview of non-alc and spirits sales teams. Jeff Long also will be promoted to chief strategy and capabilities officer, expanding his oversight of "strategy, advanced analytics and customer marketing and LATAM teams." Tho M&A team will now fall under purview of MC cfo Tracey Joubert. Among other existing leadership team members with expanded roles: chief supply chain officer Brian Erhardt will have expanded oversight of The Yuengling Company joint venture; Natalie Maciolek moves up to chief legal, comms and gov't affairs officer with added oversight of the comms and corporate affairs team; and chief people and culture officer David Osswald has expanded oversight of Coors Distributing team. No changes to roles of EMEA/APAC prexy Phil Whitehead, chief information officer Darrin Vohs or prexy of Canada sales Chantalle Butler, tho both Darrin and Chantalle are now part of MC's leadership team.Net-net, these moves quickly set Rahul up for more direct lines of communication with each biz function while cutting costs too. The "realigning" of leadership and org structure helps "to better focus P&L accountability and strategic alignment in a manner that will enable us to deliver more value for our customers and win more occasions with many more consumers," he stated. Announcement also has echoes of past ceo Gavin Hattersley's quick moves to plug in David Kroll and Kevin Doyle into larger roles as Andy England and Ed McBrien departed the co amid soft sales.Sales are soft again now with MC's US shipments down nearly 8% in first half and expecting a tuff 3d qtr. Rahul promised distribs he would work "to transform our business at a faster pace to address significant headwinds and put us back on track for future growth." In order to "achieve that, we must refocus our capabilities and energy closer to our customer markets," he said. "I understand the changes we're announcing today create uncertainty as to what this means at an individual level," he added, but "the leadership team and I plan to share more in the coming weeks as we refine our strategy and assess our resources to support our vision moving forward."

MSJ to Depart MC; No More Americas Commercial Org as Rahul Moves Fast to Set Up New Leadership Structure

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