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Donna Abbott Vlahos

The GlobalFoundries plant in Malta, located in Saratoga County, New York.

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An IBM Corp. shareholder sued the company Monday claiming it committed securities fraud by not recording the reduced value of its semiconductor unit before agreeing to pay GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to take it over, according to a Reuters report.

According to the report, the federal lawsuit stems from an Oct. 20 announcement that IBM would pay $1.5 billion to GlobalFoundries over three years to take over IBM's computer chip making operations and take a $4.7 billion pre-tax charge. According to Reuters, IBM announced its third-quarter results the same day, resulting in a 9 percent drop in share prices over the following trading days and a loss of more than $18 billion in market value.

The lawsuit claims that IBM inflated its stock price before selling the semiconductor unit.

Read more from Reuters.

GlobalFoundries, a contract chip maker owned by an investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government, operates factories in Malta, New York, as well as Dresden, Germany and Singapore. The chip maker has invested about $10 billion building and expanding its Malta factory over the past five years. That company has hired 3,000 employees in New York since 2009. GlobalFoundries also plans to invest about $10 billion in capital improvements in 2014-2015, the majority of those investments will be in New York.