Hopping to Hamm

When Roy C. Satchell, 44, quit as president of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. after only six weeks on the job earlier this year, he explained: "I wanted to leave my mark, but the company was just too big, and I couldn't do what I wanted." Satchell, the second nonfamily president that Schlitz has ever had, also said: "When things don't go the way I want, I go." Over the years, he has gone from job to job--at Sinclair Oil, at Schlitz (twice) and at a construction-equipment business that he started. Next month Satchell will leave the Harvard Business School, where he has been an instructor for one semester, in order to plunge back into beer. He has been named chairman, president and chief executive of Theodore Hamm Co., a 109-year-old St. Paul brewer.

Hamm has gone through five presidents in seven years. As much of the fiercely competitive U.S. beer market has been taken over by a few giants, Hamm, like many smaller breweries, has fallen into the red. In the past two years, it has lost $3.7 million while annual sales have remained flat at about $140 million. Recently, Heublein, Inc., which acquired Hamm for $63 million in 1965, unloaded the company for a mere $6,000,000 to a group --i-- of Midwest beer distributors called Brewer's Unlimited, Inc. The new owners called on Satchell to reorganize the company. He will say only that Hamm will be "less ambitious in terms of the market it serves." About his own role, he is more emphatic. "I told them I wanted to do things my way, and they offered me a free hand. If they don't give me the necessary freedom, it's going to cost them a lot to get rid of me."

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