SEC Charges ADM and Three Former Executives with Accounting and Disclosure Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed settled charges against Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM) and its former executives, Vince Macciocchi and Ray Young, and a litigated action against its former executive Vikram Luthar, for materially inflating the performance of a key ADM business segment, Nutrition, which ADM touted to investors as an important driver of the company’s overall growth. The SEC’s complaint against Luthar alleges that he directed “adjustments” to Nutrition’s transactions with other ADM business segments when Nutrition was falling short of its operating profit targets for fiscal years 2021 and 2022. According to the complaint, the adjustments included retroactive rebates and price changes not customarily available to ADM’s third-party customers that were essentially one-sided transfers of operating profit to Nutrition, with the goal of making it appear that Nutrition was meeting the 15% to 20% per year operating profit growth Luthar and other ADM executives projected to investors.