HERSHEY, Pa. — Hershey Co. has made changes to its global leadership team and announced a streamlining initiative aimed at improving productivity.

The company said Friday that the global leadership changes will better position Hershey to enact its strategy, support its core business, and capitalize on adjacent and international growth opportunities.

Effective immediately, Patricia Little, senior vice president and chief financial officer, will now also be responsible for corporate development, mergers and acquisitions. “M&A will continue to be an important driver of Hershey’s future success,” the company stated.

Steven Schiller, regional president of AEMEA, has been named president of China and Asia, a newly created position that Hershey said sharpens the company’s focus on its top international growth priority, China.

In addition, Hershey has created a new global leadership team role focused on growth and expansion in emerging international markets, including India and those in Latin and South America, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. The company said an internal and external candidate search is under way.

The productivity initiative, Hershey said, is focused on simplifying the company’s structure and improving ways of working to unlock growth potential in its core confection and emerging snacks businesses. The effort, too, is designed to help Hershey anticipate and respond to the changing demands of the global consumer more rapidly.Hershey said the program is expected to result in the reduction of approximately 300 jobs by the end of this calendar year.

“We have taken a fresh look at how our resources and people are deployed globally and are better aligning our structure to the company’s long-term strategies and goals,” according to Hershey chairman, president and chief executive officer John Bilbrey. “This initiative is designed to unlock greater value across the organization by empowering decision-making closer to our customers and consumers, enabling a more enterprisewide approach to innovation, swiftly advancing our knowledge agenda, and ensuring we effectively allocate resources to future growth areas. Removing cost and complexity from our business will make us more flexible to quickly react to changing consumer and competitive marketplace trends.”

The program is expected to generate pretax savings of $65 million to $75 million, mainly in 2016, of which a portion will be reinvested back into the company. Hershey said it expects that enabling further investment in brand-building and global capabilities will deliver future confectionery and snacks revenue and adjusted earnings-per-share diluted growth.

“We are confident these changes will extend our position as a global confectionery leader and create a Hershey that is even more innovative, entrepreneurial and better positioned to continue to deliver sustainable, profitable growth in an ever-changing marketplace,” Bilbrey added.