New York: Diversified conglomerate General Electric (GE) will pay a penalty of US$50 million to the US market regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of a settlement related to alleged accounting irregularities.

The settlement concludes the market regulator’s investigation of accounting issues at the company.

GE on Tuesday said it has reached a settlement with the SEC, “without admitting or denying allegations of any wrongdoing.”

“Under the terms of the settlement, the company consented to the entry of a judgement requiring it to pay a civil penalty of USD 50 million and to comply with the federal securities laws,” GE said in a statement.

The issue pertains to four accounting matters in 2002 and 2003, including those related to GE’s since-discontinued commercial paper hedging programme.

Rest of the things were about certain swap derivatives, a change in accounting for profits on spare parts in the commercial aviation engine business and certain year-end transactions in the rail business.

“The complaint alleges two of these errors, those relating to commercial paper hedging and rail transactions, were intentional violations of the anti-fraud provisions of the securities laws, and the remaining two errors were negligent violations of the securities laws,” the statement noted.