Not every strategic objective is best served by an acquisition. The decision to acquire a business outright — committing full capital, assuming full ownership, and taking on complete integration responsibility — is only one point on a spectrum of partnership structures available to a corporate development function. Joint ventures occupy a distinct position on that spectrum: a shared ownership arrangement that allows two parties to pursue a defined strategic objective together, without either party bearing the full cost, risk, or operational responsibility alone. At Archer Daniels Midland, where Anubhav Mittal leads a global business development and M&A function that explicitly encompasses joint venture strategy alongside acquisitions and divestitures, the decision between full ownership and shared partnership is a standing analytical question — not a default.
When a Joint Venture Outperforms an Acquisition
The choice between a joint venture and an outright acquisition turns on a specific set of strategic and financial conditions. When a target market requires local operational knowledge, regulatory relationships, or customer trust that cannot be efficiently transferred through acquisition, a joint venture with an established local partner may be the faster and more durable path to market entry. When the capital commitment required for full ownership exceeds what a company wants to deploy in a single investment, a JV allows partial exposure to the strategic opportunity while preserving capital for other priorities. When the strategic objective is time-bounded — accessing a capability for a defined period rather than permanently — shared ownership avoids the permanence of a full acquisition.
For a company operating across the global food and nutrition supply chain at ADM’s scale, these conditions arise frequently. Agricultural processing, specialty ingredients, and nutrition markets are often characterized by deep local relationships, country-specific regulatory environments, and distribution networks that take years to develop organically. A joint venture with the right local partner can compress that timeline substantially while distributing the execution risk.
Mittal’s mandate covering the full capital structure of ADM’s external growth activity — acquisitions, JVs, and divestitures — positions him to evaluate these trade-offs across the full range of partnership options available to the company, rather than defaulting to acquisition when a less capital-intensive structure might serve the strategic objective better.
The Governance Challenge at the Center of Every JV
Joint ventures fail more often from governance dysfunction than from strategic miscalculation. Two companies that enter a JV with aligned objectives can find themselves in sustained conflict within 18 months if the governance structure — decision rights, deadlock resolution mechanisms, financial reporting obligations, exit provisions — was not designed with the same rigor applied to the underlying business case.
The governance design problem in a JV is structurally different from anything an acquirer faces in an outright acquisition. In a wholly owned subsidiary, a parent company has unilateral decision authority. In a JV, decisions must be made jointly — and the mechanisms for resolving disagreement, approving capital expenditure, admitting new partners, or triggering an exit must be written into the agreement before the venture launches, when the relationship is cooperative and the parties are motivated to be reasonable. Attempting to negotiate those mechanisms after a dispute has emerged is a fundamentally different exercise.
Mittal’s consulting background at Booz & Company, where partnership structuring and go-to-market transformation were core advisory areas, built familiarity with the organizational dynamics that govern shared-ownership structures. That foundation, combined with his operating experience managing complex, multi-party financial relationships across ADM’s global business, informs how JV governance is approached in his current role: as a structural design problem that requires the same analytical rigor as the valuation work that precedes it.
Financial Accountability in a Shared-Ownership Structure
The financial reporting and accountability framework within a joint venture presents its own complexity. Depending on the ownership percentage and governance structure, a JV may be accounted for as a proportionally consolidated entity, an equity method investment, or a fully consolidated subsidiary — each with different implications for how the venture’s financial performance appears in the parent company’s statements. Getting the accounting treatment right from the outset requires close coordination between the M&A team, the finance organization, and external advisors before the structure is finalized.
Beyond accounting treatment, the internal governance of financial performance within the JV requires a defined set of reporting obligations, budget approval processes, and performance metrics that both parties have agreed to track. Without those mechanisms, financial accountability in a joint venture becomes diffuse — each partner manages its share of the relationship differently, and the venture’s performance becomes difficult to evaluate against the original investment case.
Mittal’s background in CFO-level financial governance — managing reporting, controls, and performance accountability across the approximately $8 billion ADM Nutrition business — provides direct operational experience with the financial infrastructure requirements that make a large, complex business unit function with accountability. Those same requirements apply, with added complexity, to joint venture structures where financial reporting must serve the informational needs of two independent ownership groups simultaneously.
Exits and the Long-Term Architecture of JV Strategy
Every joint venture should be designed with a clear picture of how it ends. Exit provisions — the right of first refusal, put and call options, drag-along and tag-along rights, and defined valuation methodologies for buyout scenarios — are not pessimistic additions to a JV agreement. They are the mechanisms that protect both parties’ interests when the strategic objectives that justified the venture have been achieved, when one party’s circumstances change, or when the relationship between partners deteriorates.
A well-designed JV exit provision also creates strategic optionality. If the venture succeeds and the strategic rationale for full ownership strengthens, a call option at a pre-agreed valuation methodology allows the acquirer to convert a partial investment into a wholly owned business without the friction of an open-market negotiation. If the venture underperforms, a defined exit path prevents the two parties from remaining locked in a structure that serves neither of their interests.
At ADM, the integration of JV strategy into the broader portfolio management mandate that Mittal leads means that joint ventures are evaluated not only at entry but continuously — assessed against the same return criteria applied to wholly owned assets, with exit provisions activated when portfolio logic supports them. That continuous governance discipline is what distinguishes a strategic JV program from a collection of individual partnership decisions.
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.
