Independent Director — Audit and Conduct (Agribusiness and Food)

Conduct matters that arrive late arrive expensive

Few things damage a board's standing faster than learning about a conduct or control failure months after the people closest to it knew. The Independent Director appointed here is there to make sure such matters cannot sit unseen. Nothing about the role is managerial; it oversees for twelve months and reports to the Nomination and Governance Committee Chair.

Independence inside a group structure

Subsidiary boards carry a particular risk: decisions are made upstream and arrive for ratification. An independent director here earns the title by asking whether the local board has genuinely examined what it is approving, and by protecting the subsidiary's own obligations when they diverge from the wider group's priorities. That takes confidence with group executives and patience with local management in equal measure.

What you will test and challenge

You will agree with management where decisions sit and which thresholds belong to local leadership, and settle what facts the directors may lean on when overseeing investment, operating capacity and controls. You will challenge inherited commitments, and any proposal that transfers cost or exposure without an accountable executive. You will test investment cases for take-up, operating dependencies and downside before approval, keep watch over how the leadership is structured and how concerns rise, and help the committee and operating leaders work through disagreements without stepping into management's role.

A year in which matters get closed, not filed

During the first ninety days, conduct and control matters should be given an agreed route to the board, along with the information it will rely on to oversee them. At about the ninth month the directors should check whether those matters are arriving promptly, and press on any that have nobody accountable for resolving them. By month 12 the directors should have walked the route from the front line to the boardroom end to end, and be satisfied that conduct matters are being resolved rather than simply recorded.

Experience that has stood under regulatory light

The committee will look for board or senior governance service in a business turning over $325 million or more, with no fewer than 1,000 people in seven countries. Regulatory remediation is the experience that counts most, ideally one in which you kept the board's account and the operating evidence in step. Platform pivot and professionalisation complete the set. The capability profile places governance ethics at level 4, then three at level 3: entity governance, risk judgement, and handling the board and its stakeholders. The committee will value a director who can tell a justified local exception from variation that survives only because nobody has questioned it, and who builds successors rather than becoming indispensable.

Nomination chair to full board

The process begins quietly, in week one, with a private video call with the Nomination and Governance Committee Chair. The Audit Committee Chair then spends a third-week working session with you on how control matters are surfaced and closed. In the fifth week you meet, in person, executive leaders who each speak for a different function, and the seventh week ends with the directors meeting as a full board. Each stage is answered in writing within three working days.