IBM Says SEC Probing Its Accounting

chriscooper1470 writes "International Business Machines Corp. on Monday said that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had begun a formal investigation of how the world's largest computer company accounted for some revenue in 2000 and 2001."

Comments

Nothing new

[mao che minh]

Things like this (or at least stark criticism from investors) concerning IBM's accounting practices pop up about every couple of years. IBM always responds by releasing more information, making the requested changes, and working with their investors and/or the government to show them "see, we didn't do anything wrong."

In other words, IBM is known to play by the rules and treat investors fairly. If they were ever guilty of anything, it would be that about 6 years ago they didn't disclose as much information as they should have to investors. That's much different now.

Re:Doesn't matter at all

[milo_Gwalthny]

My favorite way to illustrate how earnings are managed is to bring up a story from when I worked at big blue, 1990-ish.

I asked a work friend, a tech, to a new year's eve party I was having. He told me he couldn't come because he had to spend the night getting mainframes on trucks. Seems everyone in the facility (except us engineers--too soft, I guess--and management I assume) got drafted into getting more big iron shipped. You see, if it's on the truck prior to midnight, it's revenue in that year.

Of course, if it's revenue in that year then it's not revenue in the next year, so one year later they have to work twice as hard loading trucks. Then one year you run out of either trucks or iron and you miss your numbers. That's called paying the piper.

story of small-time fraud from the IT trenches

[Pfhreakaz0id]

My first real programming job, one of my first assignments was figuring out how come the quarterly sales figures didn't jibe with the monthlies and the yearlies didn't jibe with the quarterlies (sum of monthly numbers > quarter, sum of quarters > year).

Finally realized (looking at the audit tables generated by a sql trigger) that the VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES was entering a bunch of sales at the end of the month, "booking" them for the monthly report run, the "unbooking" them after the run, and eventually cancelling them. The cancels were eventually picked up on the next month's report, but the system didn't back-adjust and rerun the old month report.

This made the VP look great, although he had to get nervous because every month he had to book enough fake orders to cancel last months back charge, plus the amount he wanted to pad this month (for some asinine reason, the cancels didn't carry forward from month to month, only the previous month). BUT, the quarterly reran ALL the numbers again (it didn't just total the months), so the numbers didn't fit. Anyway, he got nice monthly bonuses.

Anyway, I had to go to my boss and show him the stuff. I was real nervous, I'd been in this position about two months and was presenting evidence of the VP engaging in fraud. The funny part? Nothing happened to him. Nothing at all (although we fixed the system). My boss said he was told it couldn't be "proven" to be him and he claimed he didn't do it. He said 'several people have my login" (smart, real smart!). Anyway, the rich get richer. I always' wondered if his bonuses got docked?