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ADM shareholder calls for CEO to leave as probe drags on

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It’s been almost a year since Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. disclosed a probe into its accounting practices that wiped out $12 billion from one of the world’s largest agricultural commodities traders.

Now, a shareholder and former executive at a company owned by ADM is calling on Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano to step down, citing the lack of transparency about exactly what happened and how it will be fixed.

In a social media post, Hartwig Fuchs said ADM didn’t do enough to reverse the share loss and that the Chicago-based company “doesn’t communicate any valuable statements.” Fuchs was board chairman at Toepfer International when ADM owned about 80% of the German trader (it now owns all of it). He was also CEO of Nordzucker AG, one of Europe’s largest sugar producers.

“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,” Fuchs said.

A spokeswoman for ADM declined to comment.

ADM in January disclosed an investigation into accounting practices at its nutrition unit, a business that makes ingredients for humans and animals that Luciano was betting on as the future of ADM. Chief Financial Officer Vikram Luthar took the brunt of the blame, agreeing to resign.

But less than 10 months after the scandal that sent shares plunging by a record 24%, the commodity-trading giant was still struggling to sort out its accounting. ADM in early November disclosed it found more errors in the way it reported transactions between its business units and that it would need to restate some of its results.

It canceled its quarterly earnings call with analysts only 14 hours before it was due to start, a move that sent shares plunging another 12%. The stock is down about 30% this year, heading for the biggest decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

“The market is reacting increasingly negatively to ADM,” Fuchs, who criticized himself for buying more of the company’s stock, said on LinkedIn on Sunday. “From a chart perspective, the share price has suffered significantly and there is obviously no effort on ADM’s part to stop or even reverse this trend.”

ADM has replaced its CFO, appointed AT&T Inc.’s top lawyer to its board and implemented new controls as part of efforts to restore credibility. It has corrected sales between units that either were previously recorded at prices that didn’t approximate the market, or included transactions that were improperly classified. So-called intersegment sales for 2023 had been previously overestimated by $1.28 billion.

This isn’t the first scandal involving ADM. Back in the 1990s, it was implicated in a price-fixing conspiracy that later became the basis of the 2009 film “The Informant!” starring Matt Damon. ADM pleaded guilty to the price-fixing charges in 1996. The company has also responded to a lawsuit over allegations of price manipulation involving its trading of ethanol. 

ADM has spent billions on its nutrition bet since 2014, when it made its biggest-ever acquisition — the $3 billion buyout of European natural ingredient maker Wild Flavors GmbH. It also spent about $1.8 billion to buy animal feed maker Neovia from France’s InVivo Group in 2019. But profits have failed to live up to initial expectations due to weakening demand, including for plant-based food.

“The ADM company, the people who work at ADM — and they are good people — they must be protected and these negative reports must be stopped,” said Fuchs. “The share price must rise again to levels that properly reflect the company’s true earning power (which, admittingly, would make me smile again).”

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House passes tax administration bills

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The House unanimously passed four bipartisan bills Tuesday concerning taxes and the Internal Revenue Service that were all endorsed this week by the American Institute of CPAs, and passed two others as well.

  • H.R. 1152, the Electronic Filing and Payment Fairness Act, sponsored by Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Illinois, Suzan Delbene, D-Washington, Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania and Jimmy Panetta, D-California. The bill would apply the “mailbox rule” to electronically submitted tax returns and payments to allow the IRS to record payments and documents submitted to the IRS electronically on the day the payments or documents are submitted instead of when they are received or reviewed at a later date. The AICPA believes this would offer clarity and simplification to the payment and document submission process while protecting taxpayers from undue penalties.
  • H.R. 998, the Internal Revenue Service Math and Taxpayer Help Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, and Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, which would require notices describing a mathematical or clerical error to be made in plain language, and require the Treasury to provide additional procedures for requesting an abatement of a math or clerical error adjustment, including by telephone or in person, among other provisions.
  • H.R. 517, the Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act, sponsored by Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tennessee, and Judy Chu, D-California. The process of receiving tax relief from the IRS following a natural disaster typically must follow a federal disaster declaration, which can often come weeks after a state disaster declaration. The bill would provide the IRS with authority to grant tax relief once the governor of a state declares either a disaster or a state of emergency and expand the mandatory federal filing extension under Section 7508(d) of the Tax Code from 60 days to 120 days, providing taxpayers with more time to file tax returns after a disaster.
  • H.R. 1491, the Disaster related Extension of Deadlines Act, sponsored by Rep. Gregory Murphy, R-North Carolina, and Jimmy Panetta, D-California, would extend the amount of time disaster victims would have to file for a tax refund or credit (i.e., the lookback period) by the amount of time afforded pursuant to a disaster relief postponement period for taxpayers affected by major disasters. This legislative solution would place taxpayers on equal footing as taxpayers not impacted by major disasters and would afford greater clarity and certainty to taxpayers and tax practitioners regarding this lookback period.

“The AICPA has long supported these proposals and will continue to work to advance comprehensive legislation that enhances IRS operations and improves the taxpayer experience,” said Melanie Lauridsen, vice president of tax policy and advocacy for the AICPA, in a statement Tuesday. “We are pleased to work closely with each of these Representatives on common-sense reforms that will benefit taxpayers, tax practitioners and tax administration and we’re encouraged by their passage in the House. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress to improve the taxpayer experience.”

The bills were also included in a recent Senate discussion draft aimed at improving tax administration at the IRS that are strongly supported by the AICPA.

The House also passed two other tax-related bills Tuesday that weren’t endorsed in the recent AICPA letter. 

  • H.R. 1155, Recovery of Stolen Checks Act, sponsored by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-New York, would require the IRS to create a process for taxpayers to request a replacement via direct deposit for a stolen paper check. If a check is determined to be stolen or lost, and not cashed, a taxpayer will receive a replacement check once the original check is cancelled, but many taxpayers are having their replacement checks stolen as well. Taxpayers who have a check stolen are then unable to request that the replacement check be sent via direct deposit. The bill would require the Treasury to establish processes and procedures under which taxpayers, who are otherwise eligible to receive an amount by paper check in replacement of a lost or stolen paper check, may elect to receive such amount by direct deposit.
  • H.R. 997, National Taxpayer Advocate Enhancement Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, would prevent IRS interference with National Taxpayer Advocate personnel by granting the NTA responsibility for its attorneys. In advocating for taxpayer rights, the National Taxpayer Advocate often requires independent legal advice. But currently, the staff members hired by the National Taxpayer Advocate are accountable to internal IRS counsel, not the Taxpayer Advocate, creating a potential conflict of interest to the detriment of taxpayers. The bill would authorize the National Taxpayer Advocate to hire attorneys who report directly to her, helping establish independence from the IRS. 

House  Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Missouri, applauded the bipartisan House passage of the various bills, which had been unanimously passed by the committee.

“President Trump was elected on the promise of finally making the government work better for working people,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. “This bipartisan legislation helps fulfill that mandate and makes improvements to tax administration that will make it easier for the American people to file their taxes. Those who are rebuilding after a natural disaster particularly need help filing taxes, which is why this set of bills lightens the load for taxpayers in communities struck by a hurricane, tornado or some other disaster. With Tax Day just a few days away, we must look for common-sense, bipartisan ways to make filing taxes less of a hassle.”

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Accounting

In the blogs: Many hats

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Teaching fraud; easement settlement offers; new blog on the block; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.

Many hats

  • Taxbuzz (https://www.taxbuzz.com/blog): There’s sure an “I” in this “teamwork:” What to know about potential IRS and ICE collaboration.
  • Tax Vox (https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox): How IRS data would likely be unhelpful validating SNAP eligibility.
  • Yeo & Yeo (https://www.yeoandyeo.com/resources): How financial benchmarking (including involving taxes) can help business clients see trends, pinpoint areas for improvement and forecast future performance.
  • Integritas3 (https://www.integritas3.com/blog): One way to take a bite out of crime, according to this instructor blogger: Teach grad students how to detect, investigate and prevent financial fraud.
  • HBK (https://hbkcpa.com/insights/): Verifying income, fairly distributing property, digging the soon-to-be-ex’s assets out of the back of the dark, dark closet: How forensic accounting has emerged as a crucial element in divorces.

Standing out

Genuine intelligence

  • AICPA & CIMA Insights (https://www.aicpa-cima.com/blog): How artificial intelligence and other tech is “Reshaping Finance,” according to this podcast. Didem Un Ates, CEO of a U.K.-based company offering AI advisory services, tackles the topic.
  • Taxjar (https:/www.taxjar.com/resources/blog): How AI and automation can help even the knottiest sales tax obligations and problems.
  • Dean Dorton (https://deandorton.com/insights/): Favorite opening of the week: “The madness doesn’t just happen on college basketball courts — it also happens when your finance team is stuck using a legacy on-premises accounting system.”
  • Canopy (https://www.getcanopy.com/blog): Top client portals for accounting firms in 2025.
  • Mauled Again (https://mauledagain.blogspot.com/): Despite what Facebook claims, dependents have to be human.

New to us

  • Berkowitz Pollack Brant (https://www.bpbcpa.com/articles-press-releases/): This Florida firm offers a variety of services to many industries and has a good, wide-ranging blog. Recent topics include the BE-10, nexus and state and local tax obligations, IRS cuts and what to know about the possible bonus depreciation phase out. Welcome!

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Accounting

Is gen AI really a SOX gamechanger?

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By streamlining tasks such as risk assessment, control testing, and reporting, gen AI has the potential to increase efficiency across the entire SOX lifecycle.

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