McKesson is relocating from San Francisco to the Dallas area

Although it employs 75,000 globally and is No. 6 on the Fortune 500 list, McKesson’s move from downtown San Francisco to Las Colinas, a Dallas satellite city, is not a dramatic shift except for the executive leadership and some corporate functions. (Coincidentally, incoming CEO Brian Tyler, who will succeed current CEO John Hammergren, already lives in the Dallas area.) The company opened the Las Colinas “hub” in 2017, and currently employs nearly 2,000 there, according to press reports. McKesson’s Nov. 30 announcement neglected to mention how many jobs are being relocated, but did say that several hundred people associated with McKesson Ventures, and a tech development group for US Oncology (a McKesson business unit) will remain in the Bay area.

“As part of our strategic growth initiative, we’ve developed a hub location strategy, co-locating people based on the type of work they do to improve teamwork, advance innovation and increase efficiency,” said Tyler, current president and COO. “Bringing employee groups together in key locations will make McKesson a more streamlined and agile company, complementing our investments and improving operating profit growth for the organization.” The company is working through a strategic development plan to cut operating expenses by $300-400 million by the end of FY 2021.

McKesson has been headquartered in San Francisco since 1970 (founded in New York in 1833, it is one of the oldest corporations in America); it had sold its San Francisco skyscraper in 2017. In leaving the Bay area, it joins an exodus of other corporations escaping the high cost of real estate and employment there, while Texas Governor Greg Abbott welcomed the company as “an example of the kind of high-quality companies and jobs Texas has attracted as a result of our focus on economic growth.” Coincidentally, McKesson competitor AmerisourceBergen also has extensive facilities in the Dallas area, with a facility under construction in Carrollton for 3,000 employees (half of whom apparently are moving from nearby Irving).