NEW YORK SEC has issued notice of inquiry into transactions, IBM announces

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal regulators are investigating how technology giant IBM Corp. booked revenue in 2000 and 2001, the company disclosed.
IBM said Monday it had received a notice of a formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that primarily concerns "certain types of customer transactions." Spokesmen for IBM declined to elaborate.
The Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it thinks the probe arose from a separate SEC investigation into a customer of IBM's retail store solutions unit, which sells computing equipment and software for checkout counters, kiosks and other "points of sale."
SEC spokesman John Heine declined to comment and would neither confirm nor deny an investigation.
'Committed to standards'
IBM said it is cooperating fully with the SEC and is "committed to maintaining the highest standards" of accounting.
"I would say that our business practices are very conservative," IBM spokesman Bill Hughes said.
He would not say when the investigation began.
Last year, the SEC opened an inquiry into how IBM accounted for income it got from the sale of a business to communications equipment manufacturer JDS Uniphase Corp. The SEC closed the investigation without taking any action.
IBM is the nation's eighth-largest company. It earned $3.6 billion in 2002 on revenue of $81 billion.