IBM: Intnl Bus. Mach: Virginia M. Rometty Elected IBM Chairman

  IBM: Intnl Bus. Mach: Virginia M. Rometty Elected IBM Chairman

UK Regulatory Announcement

ARMONK, N.Y.

The IBM (NYSE: IBM) board of directors today elected Virginia M. Rometty
chairman of the board, effective October 1, 2012. Mrs. Rometty succeeds Samuel
J. Palmisano, who is stepping down from the board effective October 1, 2012.

Mr. Palmisano will become Senior Adviser to the company until he retires on
December 1, 2012. As of October 1, 2012, Mrs. Rometty's title will be IBM
chairman, president and chief executive officer.

Mrs. Rometty, 55, is currently IBM's president and chief executive officer.
She succeeded Mr. Palmisano as IBM's ninth CEO in January of this year, after
holding senior leadership positions in IBM's services, sales, strategy and
marketing units. Mrs. Rometty led the successful integration of
PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting -- the largest acquisition in professional
services history, building a team of more than 100,000 business consultants
and services experts. She became a director of IBM in January.

Mr. Palmisano, 61, became IBM chief executive officer in 2002 and chairman of
the board in 2003. During his tenure, IBM transformed its product and services
portfolio, exiting commoditizing businesses, including PCs, printers and hard
disk drives, and greatly increasing investments in analytics, cloud computing
and other high-value businesses and technologies. He has overseen the
transformation of IBM from a multinational into a globally integrated
enterprise. During Mr. Palmisano’s tenure as CEO, IBM created over $100
billion of total shareholder value.

IBM
Edward Barbini, 914-499-6565
barbini@us.ibm.com

Contact:

IBM