Alan Guebert is an Illinois farm journalist.
This fall, Dwayne Andreas, Archer Daniels Midland’s chairman and chief executive, called to order the company’s 72nd annual meeting in the gymnasium of a retired school that now serves as ADM’s Lakeview Centre.
Quickly, Andreas moved to the first order of business: a listing of the directors “who will be elected.”
He read the names of all 17 current directors and asked for a single motion to adopt the slate in one swoop.
A rapid “so moved” and “I second” floated up from the assembled crowd.
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Andreas asked if there were any other nominations.
A split second later, he said, “hearing none, I declare the nominations closed.”
Startled by the fast action, several stockholders shot out of their folding chairs crying “point of order, Mr. Chairman.” Andreas acknowledged their existence with a curt, “there will be a time for questions later.”
He then called for the vote. Again, three stockholders rose to challenge Andreas’s slam-dunk. Again Andreas put them off. One angry shareholder loudly grumbled, “this meeting shows just how this company is run.”
Taking the bait, but with little inflection in his voice, Andreas retorted, “this meeting, sir, runs according to my rules.”
Just what those rules are was made plain a little later when all the corporate apple polishing was interrupted again by a sarcastic stockholder who asked “just what are the rules?”
“I make the rules as I go along,” replied Andreas tartly.
Evidently that is not uncommon for ADM. Some of its rule-making is now under investigation by a federal grand jury in Chicago.
One alleged rule, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, states “competitors are friends; customers are our enemies.”
During the annual meeting, Andreas himself showed a stunning gift for both making and interpreting rules.
In his introduction of Brian Mulroney, an ADM director and former Canadian prime minister, Andreas fired back at critics who claim ADM’s corporate directors are too cozy with the boss (10 of the 17 are either past or current ADM executives or relatives), overpaid (each non-employee director earns $100,000 a year), and under-worked (the board meets five times a year).
Andreas noted that Mulroney, as Canada’s past leader, was present at the creation of the international economic Group of Seven and played key roles during GATT and NAFTA negotiations.
And, continued his boss:
“He was a recent weekend guest of Yeltsin. He was a week-long guest of the Prime Minister of China. He has been with Mr. Mitterand of France and Mr. Kohl of Germany – all countries where we have business interests.”
In sum, said Andreas, ADM “shareholders get a big bang for their buck” by having the “right honorable Brian Mulroney” on the ADM board.
Later, when Andreas took questions from the floor, one shareholder asked if ADM had lobbied to preserve ethanol’s federal tax exemptions.
No, said Andreas. In direct contradiction to his just-concluded praise of how Mulroney is plugged into the international political power grid, Andreas added: “For 20 years, we have not lobbied Congress for anything.”
