April 10 (Reuters) - Archer-Daniels-Midland Co ( ADM )

CEO Juan Luciano was paid $24.4 million in 2023, down 1% from

the prior year, according to a securities filing on Wednesday

that came after an internal investigation into its financial

reports.

The Chicago-based grain trader is confronting past

accounting issues that have triggered two government

investigations and forced the company to revise six years of

financial data.

ADM had delayed paying bonuses to some executives until

it conducted an internal investigation and audited its financial

statements, which were published on March 12.

Luciano's compensation included a slight increase in base

salary to $1.483 million and company stock awards valued at

$17.920 million, according to ADM's annual proxy statement filed

with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company paid $32.9 million in long-term incentives to

its top executives, which includes equity in the form of 60%

performance share units (PSUs), it disclosed in a filing.

Reuters reported on March 21 that executives would receive

millions of dollars in bonus compensation, but the detailed

salary breakdowns were only made public on Wednesday.

ADM, a $31 billion company that also makes animal feed,

sweeteners and other products, is trying to regain investor

confidence while facing a criminal investigation by the

Department of Justice. Government investigations are not

evidence of wrongdoing and do not necessarily result in charges.

ADM has said it is cooperating with authorities.

The company put its CFO Vikram Luthar on administrative

leave in January while it launched an internal investigation

focused on accounting practices in its Nutrition segment, the

smallest of three business units at the 122-year-old company.

ADM last month confirmed that some sales between its

business units were not accurately recorded and corrected

certain segment-specific financial information going back to

2018.

The disclosure revealed that ADM had overstated the

Nutrition segment's annual operating profit by as much as 9.2%

in that time.

The accounting issues and revisions to financial

statements have focused attention on how ADM rewards its top

executives.

A change by the company's Compensation and Succession

Committee in 2020 tied half of long-term executive compensation

to average operating profit growth of the Nutrition segment over

a three-year period, with the remainder tied mostly to return on

invested capital.

ADM has since replaced the Nutrition-focused performance

metric and instead tied half of long-term compensation to the

company's adjusted earnings per share instead, proxy statements

showed.

Still, in 2023 most senior executives received the long-term

performance share units (PSUs) that they were awarded in 2021 at

100% of the targeted payout despite operating profit growth in

Nutrition shrinking 8.5% from 2021 to 2023 as return on invested

capital exceeded expectations, Wednesday's proxy statement

showed.

The proxy statement also confirmed ADM's statement last

month that the revised financial statements would not impact

previous executive compensation payouts.

"This helps get to the bottom of how the segment

reporting issues did not affect bonuses," said Kevin Murphy, a

professor of finance at the University of Southern California,

adding that "the revisions were not large enough to change the

payouts."

The Board's Compensation Committee has not yet decided

on PSU compensation for CFO Luthar as he is on administrative

leave, according to the filing.

ADM's Board decided against doling out an additional

boost to the long-term compensation based on favorable

shareholder returns in 2023, as outlined in the plan, ADM said

in the filing.

(Additional reporting by Arunima Kumar and Roshia Sabu in

Bengaluru and Chris Prentice in New York; Editing by Krishna

Chandra Eluri and Sonali Paul)