In large organizations, the CFO function and the corporate development function often operate in close but distinct lanes. The CFO function owns financial discipline, planning, reporting, performance management, capital allocation, and the internal processes that translate operating activity into financial results. Corporate development focuses on the external strategic agenda, including the transactions and partnerships that reshape a company’s portfolio.
Anubhav Mittal’s career connects those disciplines. Across more than two decades at Kellogg Company, ADM, and Booz & Company, he has operated across CFO leadership, business development, M&A, strategy, capital allocation, restructuring, and transformation work. His career is not a sequence of unrelated roles. It reflects the integration of finance and corporate development in decisions that affect enterprise value.
Two Disciplines, One Analytical Foundation
The Anubhav Mittal CFO profile is central to understanding that integration. CFO leadership and corporate development may look different in organizational structure, but both disciplines are grounded in the same core question: how should capital be deployed to create durable value?
A CFO asks that question about the existing business. How is capital being used inside the current portfolio? Are margins improving? Is working capital being managed effectively? Are business units earning appropriate returns? What operating changes would improve performance?
Corporate development asks a related question about external opportunities. Would an acquisition, divestiture, joint venture, carve-out, strategic partnership, or capital investment create more value than the alternatives available? Would the transaction advance the right strategic objective, and can the organization execute after signing?
Mittal’s career has required him to work through both versions of that question. The analytical foundation is similar. The application differs.
What CFO Experience Adds to Corporate Development
CFO experience gives a corporate development leader a practical understanding of how businesses perform after capital is deployed. That operating perspective can strengthen diligence, valuation, deal structuring, and integration planning.
A transaction model is built on assumptions. Those assumptions may involve margin sustainability, working capital needs, capital expenditure requirements, operating costs, integration complexity, or value capture timing. A finance leader who has managed performance inside a large business unit brings a sharper understanding of how those assumptions behave in practice.
The Anubhav Mittal Business Development and M&A profile reflects that connection. His experience includes approximately $10 billion in transactions and strategic investments across acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, carve-outs, IPO readiness, strategic partnerships, and capital investments. That transaction record sits alongside CFO experience at ADM Nutrition, an approximately $8 billion global business with more than 14,000 employees.
The combination matters. It allows transaction evaluation to be informed not only by what a deal could become, but by what operating execution would require.
What Corporate Development Adds to Finance Leadership
The relationship also works in the opposite direction. Corporate development experience can strengthen CFO leadership by bringing a comparative investment lens to internal capital allocation.
In M&A, investment decisions are rarely evaluated in isolation. A transaction must be compared with other possible uses of capital. The question is not only whether a deal is attractive on its own terms. It is whether the deal represents a better use of capital than other investments, partnerships, divestitures, or strategic alternatives.
That mindset is highly relevant inside a business unit. A CFO with corporate development experience can assess internal investment requests with the same discipline used to evaluate external transactions. Each proposed use of capital can be tested for strategic fit, expected return, risk, timing, execution readiness, and opportunity cost.
This comparative discipline supports better investment governance. It encourages leaders to evaluate competing priorities through a common framework rather than treating each request as a separate case.
ADM and the Integration of Finance and Strategy
The Anubhav Mittal ADM chapter shows how finance and corporate development can operate together at enterprise scale. Mittal currently serves as vice president and global head of Business Development and M&A at ADM, where he leads work across acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, strategic partnerships, and capital investments.
That role requires transaction judgment, but it also requires capital allocation discipline. Strategic opportunities have to be evaluated against financial return, portfolio fit, risk, and execution requirements. A deal may align with the company’s strategic direction, but it still needs a sound financial structure and a credible path to value capture.
Mittal’s earlier CFO experience at ADM Nutrition adds operating context to that role. As CFO of the approximately $8 billion business unit, he oversaw commercial finance, operations finance, FP&A, controlling, strategy, and M&A. He also contributed to initiatives focused on ROIC improvement, margin expansion, and working capital reduction.
Together, those responsibilities show how finance strategy and corporate development reinforce one another. The same executive perspective can support business performance, investment governance, and transaction execution.
Kellogg and the Strategy-to-Execution Link
The Anubhav Mittal Kellogg experience adds another layer to that integrated profile. At Kellogg Company, Mittal held senior finance and strategy roles, including vice president of finance for Kellogg North America and senior director of corporate development and strategy.
His work at Kellogg included growth strategy, portfolio choices, resource allocation, global investment opportunities, restructuring programs, and cross-functional accountability. That experience helped develop the ability to connect strategic planning with finance execution.
He also managed a major global restructuring program, overseeing design, execution, tracking, and accountability. That type of assignment requires more than planning. It requires the finance function to build the business case, support execution, measure progress, and help senior leaders understand whether the program is delivering against its objectives.
That link between strategy and execution appears throughout Mittal’s career. Strategy is not treated as a separate exercise from finance. Finance becomes the discipline that tests, supports, and tracks strategic decisions.
Credentials as Analytical Infrastructure
Mittal’s educational and professional credentials support this integrated finance and strategy profile. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School with concentrations in finance and strategy, and he holds a Bachelor of Technology in mechanical engineering from IIT Kanpur, where he graduated in the top 5% of his class.
He also holds both the Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Management Accountant designations. The CFA credential aligns with investment analysis, valuation, and capital markets. The CMA credential aligns with management accounting, planning, performance management, and internal financial discipline.
That combination maps closely to a career bridging CFO leadership and corporate development. Corporate development requires investment analysis and transaction judgment. CFO leadership requires operating finance, performance management, and internal accountability. Mittal’s credentials support both sides of that professional profile.
The Value of an Integrated Perspective
The case for executives who operate across the finance-strategy boundary becomes more compelling as organizations grow in scale and complexity. The decisions that matter most are rarely purely financial or purely strategic. They are usually both.
A major acquisition is a strategic choice about where a company should compete and a financial decision about valuation, structure, risk, and expected return. A capital allocation framework is a strategic process and a financial discipline. A transformation program is an operating change, a strategic repositioning, and a financial accountability exercise.
Mittal’s career reflects the value of working across those boundaries. He has served in CFO, corporate development, strategy, M&A, restructuring, and capital allocation roles. That range allows him to evaluate decisions through multiple lenses without losing the rigor required by finance leadership.
Why the CFO-to-Corporate-Development Path Matters
The path from CFO leadership to corporate development matters because it brings operating reality into transaction evaluation. It also brings transaction discipline into internal finance decisions.
A CFO who understands corporate development can evaluate capital requests against broader alternatives. A corporate development leader with CFO experience can test deal assumptions against the practical demands of running and improving a business. An executive with both perspectives is better positioned to connect portfolio strategy, capital allocation, transaction execution, and performance accountability.
That is the central pattern in Mittal’s career. His work has connected finance strategy across two disciplines that are often adjacent but separate. The result is a professional profile built around enterprise value creation, not only functional expertise.
About Anubhav Mittal
Anubhav Mittal is a senior finance and corporate development executive with more than two decades of experience across CFO leadership, corporate strategy, global M&A, capital allocation, and business transformation at ADM and Kellogg Company. He currently serves as vice president and global head of Business Development and M&A at ADM. He holds an MBA from Anubhav Mittal Harvard Business School, a B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, and both the CFA and CMA designations. To learn more, visit Anubhav Mittal’s professional profile.