IBM stock sinks on fear of bad accounting practices

Has IBM been hiding large losses? Has the company's performance been less

rosy that its financial reports have stated? Speculation of negative accounting

news coming out of IBM this week has caused a large drop in IBM's shares on Wall

Street as investors fear the kind of accounting practices that doomed the Enron

energy company may also have been going on at IBM.

IBM fueled the speculation by announcing that it planning to release more

financial data to investors. In today's environment of suspicion over widespread

questionable accounting practices at large companies, the IBM announcement was

seen as a sign the company wants to come out with bad news now rather than

attempting to further hide facts from investors.

IBM has been criticized for years for not providing a lot of information in

quarterly earnings reports. IBM said it is now changing that policy in order to

meet requests by investors and analysts in the wake of the Enron scandal.

IBM's shares fell below $100 for the first time since October 11. IBM s said

that starting with its 2001 annual report, IBM will disclose intellectual

property income, the impact of gains and losses from its investments, the effect

of amortization of goodwill, gains on sales of real estate and the impact of

income from IBM's pension plan.