Agribusiness is not a forgiving industry for financial leaders. Commodity price volatility, global supply chain exposure, regulatory complexity across multiple jurisdictions, and the constant tension between input cost management and margin preservation create a financial environment that tests analytical rigor and strategic judgment simultaneously. Executives who perform at the highest level in this industry have typically developed their skills across multiple disciplines and multiple business contexts. Anubhav Mittal’s career at Archer Daniels Midland reflects what that development looks like in practice.
The Financial Complexity of a Global Food and Agriculture Company
Archer Daniels Midland operates across agricultural origination, processing, transportation, and specialty nutrition — a diversified business model that exposes the company to risks and opportunities across a wide range of markets, geographies, and customer segments. Managing the finances of a business operating at that scale requires more than technical accounting proficiency. It requires the ability to read market signals, model scenarios under uncertainty, and make capital and portfolio decisions in environments where the cost of being wrong is significant.
Anubhav Mittal has operated at the center of ADM’s financial and strategic decision-making across multiple roles — as CFO of the Nutrition Business Unit, as VP Finance for Global Pet Solutions, and now as VP and Global Head of Business Development and M&A. That progression across roles reflects both depth and versatility: the ability to perform at the highest level across different business types, organizational contexts, and strategic mandates.
Managing Performance Across a $8 Billion Business Unit
When Anubhav Mittal served as CFO of ADM’s Nutrition Business Unit, he led a finance organization supporting an approximately $8 billion global operation serving B2B and B2C markets across more than 14,000 employees. The scope of that mandate — commercial finance, operations finance, FP&A, controlling, strategy, and M&A — reflects the breadth expected of a senior finance leader at a large, diversified business unit.
During his tenure, Mittal worked to improve return on invested capital, expand margins, and reduce working capital through structured optimization initiatives. These are not straightforward assignments in a business of that complexity. Improving ROIC requires both revenue-side and cost-side discipline — sharper commercial decisions, better asset utilization, and tighter governance over capital expenditures. Expanding margins in a commodity-adjacent business requires protecting pricing while managing input cost exposure. Each of these priorities demands close coordination between finance and the operating functions that drive underlying performance.
Mittal also worked closely with investor relations, controllership, and external reporting teams on earnings support and segment messaging — a dimension of CFO leadership that requires translating complex operational performance into clear, accurate, and strategically coherent communication for external audiences.
Supporting a High-Growth Business Without Sacrificing Discipline
The finance leadership challenge at ADM’s Global Pet Solutions platform was categorically different from the Nutrition CFO role. A business growing at approximately 20% compound annual growth rate is not looking for the finance function to slow it down — it needs financial infrastructure that can scale as fast as the business itself, governance structures that prevent undisciplined spending without impeding execution, and strategic support that helps operating leaders make better decisions faster.
Mittal led restructuring and turnaround initiatives during this period alongside the growth mandate — demonstrating the ability to apply the right financial frameworks to the right problems simultaneously. The analytical discipline required to manage a high-growth platform is not simply a lighter version of mature business finance. It is a distinct set of priorities: building cost transparency into a rapidly changing cost structure, modeling scenarios at a pace that keeps up with business development decisions, and establishing controls that grow with the organization.
Kellogg and the Consumer Goods Finance Perspective
Before ADM, Anubhav Mittal served as VP Finance for Kellogg North America — one of the most recognized consumer brands globally — leading finance and strategy work focused on growth initiatives, portfolio choices, turnaround execution, and resource allocation. Consumer goods finance at the scale of Kellogg North America operates in a high-velocity commercial environment: promotional investment decisions, retailer negotiations, brand portfolio management, and market share competition all have direct financial implications that must be modeled, tracked, and managed in near-real time.
Mittal also managed a major global restructuring program at Kellogg, overseeing its design, execution, and cross-functional accountability. That program management experience — coordinating financial commitments with operational delivery across a multinational organization — directly shaped the governance discipline Mittal has brought to his subsequent roles at ADM.
The transition from consumer packaged goods to agribusiness represents a significant shift in industry context, but the underlying finance leadership demands are structurally similar: commodity exposure, complex supply chains, global operations, and the constant pressure to allocate capital toward its highest and best use. Mittal’s experience across both industries gives him a perspective that executives with single-sector careers rarely develop.
About Anubhav Mittal
Anubhav Mittal is a senior finance, corporate development, and value-creation executive with more than two decades of experience leading strategy, M&A, capital allocation, restructuring, and business transformation across global public companies. He currently serves as VP and Global Head of Business Development and M&A at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). Previously, he held CFO-level and senior finance leadership roles within ADM and at Kellogg Company, and began his career at Booz & Company. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School with a concentration in Finance and Strategy, and a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, graduating in the top 5% of his class. He holds the CFA and CMA designations and is based in Chicago, Illinois.
