A short ride uptown from Wall Street and a mere three blocks from Rockefeller Center, more than 100 Anheuser-Busch InBev employees filter in to work each day at a building at 250 Park Avenue in New York City.

Designed in 1925, it is one of the few older buildings on Park Avenue. But it doesn’t stand out for that so much as it does for the speculation that it’s being transformed into the new world headquarters for A-B InBev.

Although company officials stress St. Louis is the primary seat of North American operations and that Leuven, Belgium, continues to serve as A-B InBev’s global headquarters, a relocation of corporate power is under way. New York is emerging as the new epicenter of influence for the world’s largest brewer.

“In my mind (New York) is the de facto hub,” said analyst Mark Swartzberg of Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. “They want to be more visible to investors in the United States, so New York has clearly gained importance.”

Anheuser-Busch executive Robert Golden’s relocation to New York last month eliminated another high-level post in St. Louis and further concentrated the clout of parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev’s five-month-old Manhattan office.

The workers there, most of whom fill management positions transferred from Belgium, occupy the company’s 31,557 square feet on the second floor of the building. About 10 of the people there relocated from St. Louis or other Anheuser-Busch facilities, said spokeswoman Marianne Amssoms, though she declined to provide their names or titles.

Golden, who spent the past 19 years as vice president of mergers and acquisitions, now heads up dealmaking worldwide from the Big Apple. His promotion is the latest illustration that St. Louis is playing an increasingly smaller role within a much larger corporate machine.

A-B InBev chief executive Carlos Brito and chief financial officer Felipe Dutra are spending much of their time in New York and, by most accounts, have made it their home base. The rest of the parent company’s “global functioning heads”—chief marketing officer Chris Burggraeve, chief legal and communications officer Sabine Chalmers, chief supply officer Claudio Braz Ferro, chief people and technology officer Claudio Garcia, and chief procurement officer Tony Milikin—and members of their respective teams also work in Manhattan now. Robert Ottenstein, global vice president of investor relations, is there too.

Amssoms, the spokeswoman, transferred from Belgium to New York. She said the Manhattan office allows executives to “better support the needs of the combined global organization” and offers “a great example of how the combination of Anheuser-Busch and InBev has significantly strengthened our talent pipeline.”

Analyst Ann Gilpin of Morningstar Inc. said A-B InBev has downplayed the rising stature of its New York office and the number of people it is moving there “due to the obvious sensitivity to their communities (in Belgium and St. Louis). I don’t think they would completely close St. Louis down or uproot it, but for all intents and purposes, I think New York will be at least a co-North American headquarters.”

St. Louis’ status as A-B InBev’s North American headquarters remains significant. North American zone president Luiz Fernando Edmond and Anheuser-Busch subsidiary president Dave Peacock are based here with a team of 12 senior executives responsible for brewing, marketing, and selling Budweiser and other brands across the continent. That’s no small task considering Anheuser-Busch still holds a nearly 50 percent share of the U.S. beer market and accounts for more than 40 percent of A-B InBev’s total earnings.

“St. Louis is now home to the largest division of one of the world’s top-five consumer-product companies,” Peacock said. “Certain corporate responsibilities are based in our global offices, but the day-to-day business decisionmaking and strategies are handled at the zone level. Some global functions, including global brands and areas of people support, also are based in St. Louis, where there are strong resources.”

But the Big Apple’s gravitational pull continues to raise questions about the future roles of St. Louis and Leuven, particularly when Brito, a Stanford-educated Brazilian, presumably has few deep-seated ties to either city.