Chemours completes internal audit, replaces CEO

Chemours has completed its planned procedures with respect to an internal review that it first announced on 29 February. This essentially confirmed the details revealed in an interim report on 7 March. More will be published in the compensation discussion and analysis in the proxy statement for the 2024 annual meeting.

The Audit Committee’s internal review of working capital actions determined that payments of up to about $100 million that were due to be paid in Q4 2023 were delayed until Q1 2024, while about $260 million of receivables that were not due Q1 2024 were accelerated into Q4 2023. Similar actions took place in Q4 2022 to Q1 2023, though with lesser sums.

The review also determined that there was a lack of transparency by three former members of senior management who were not directly named but are clearly CEO Mark Newman, CFO Jonathan Lock and principal accounting officer Camela Wisel. All three were put on administrative leave on 29 February. Since then, Denise Dignam has been confirmed as permanent CEO.

The three are believed to have taken these actions in part to meet free cash flow targets that would be part of a key metric for determining incentive compensation themselves and other executive officers. Because of the findings, the board has refused to pay them the incentives. The review process followed an anonymous report made to Chemours’ ethics hotline that was eventually connected to the year-end 2023 external audit process. As a result, the company delayed announcing its Q4 and full-year results, which were due to be made on 29 February