Dive Brief:

• Chicago-based Archer Daniels Midland appointed Carrie Nichols, 45, as its chief accounting officer, the company announced Wednesday. The change is effective March 1. 
• Nichols, a certified public accountant with more than 20 years of experience in finance and accounting who began her career in public accounting at KPMG, most recently was chief accounting officer and global process leader at Cargill, another large agribusiness based in Minnetonka, Minnesota.  
• She will report to CFO Monish Patolawala, who took the finance reins last year after the company disclosed an internal accounting probe as well as SEC and Department of Justice investigations into its accounting practices. “Bringing in a new CAO is likely part of an overhaul by the new CFO to make sure that stronger accounting controls are in place,” said Morningstar equity strategist Seth Goldstein, who follows ADM. 

Dive Insight:

Compensation for Nichols will include an initial annual base salary of $550,000, an annual equity award with an approximate target grant date value of $1.3 million and a”one-time make whole” cash payments of $796,000 to be paid within 30 days of Nichol’s start date and $585,000 to be paid within 30 days of the one-year anniversary of her start date, according to a securities filing.  

Nichols joins the company as it is still seeking to put the accounting problems behind it. Shortly after his arrival, ADM CFO Patolawala said that one of his priorities would be to help fix the “root cause” of the material weakness that emerged in the company’s accounting practices involving intersegment reporting. 

But as the one-year anniversary this month of the announcement of the accounting troubles approached, one investor late last month expressed frustration with the lack of information and progress in resolving the matter. Hartwig Fuchs, who described himself as an investor, suggested that CEO Juan Ricardo Luciano might need to leave the company. 

“A German proverb says: The fish always stinks from the head,” Fuchs wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “If a highly paid CEO of such an important company cannot manage to provide clarity within a few months — i.e. fully clear up the scandal, [communicate] with full transparency about what went wrong and what will be done in the future, regain investors trust and, above all, protect the company from long-term damage — then he has to go.”

ADM did not respond to requests for comment.