IBM to move division HQ to China

IBM plans to move the headquarters of its procurement division, one of its biggest, from Somers, New York, to Shenzhen, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move underscores a growing outward shift for one of the US' leading technology companies and the second largest software seller in the world. IBM has been buying resources in Asia for five decades but most of its purchases have supplied the hardware-manufacturing side of the business, the newspaper reported. Now the company wants to expand its supply base for software products and its service division, the largest in the world. IBM spends about 30% of its US$40 billion procurement budget in Asia-Pacific and about half of that in China.