Former Executive Returns to Cargill for Strategy Team

Cargill Inc. announced that a former company executive, Gert-Jan van den Akker, will be rejoining the company effective December 1, after recently leaving Louis Dreyfus Corp., to join a team of six people who will determine corporate strategy.

The six person Cargill Leadership Team will also include the company’s chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and chief risk officer.

Van den Akker joined Cargill in 1987, service as a managing director of the ocean transportation business and member of the company’s risk committee for twenty years.

Van den Akker "will play an important role in driving Cargill's direction and goals," Reuters reports Cargill chief executive David MacLennan said, who himself was announced just last week as Cargill’s new chairman of the board.

Cargill is one of the four global ‘ABCD’ companies that dominate global commodity movement and trade, rivaling Bunge Ltd, Archer Daniels Midland Co., and Louis Dreyfus. The four giants have recently reported soft earnings despite a bumper U.S. grain harvest last year. In August, Cargill posted a net loss of $51 million for the quarter ending May 31 – a significant drop from a profit of $376 million posted for the same period a year before.

Other executive moves within the space include Cargill executive, Patrick Bowe moving to The Andersons, and Bunge controller, Karen Roebuck agreeing to a shift to a position “focused on management processes and controls,” as chief accounting and risk officer for Talen Energy, Matt Simmons, will be assuming the role of new controller and principal accounting officer for the company.