Toshiba CEO says newfound accounting errors not huge

TOKYO (Reuters) - The head of scandal-tarred Toshiba Corp said on Monday the company has found a half-decade's worth of new accounting problems forcing it to further delay closing its books but that it does not expect a big impact on its projected results.

The laptops-to-nuclear conglomerate has found some 10 new cases of accounting errors stretching back to around 2010, although these will not drastically affect Toshiba's forecast for an operating profit of 170 billion yen ($1.40 billion) for the year ended March 31, Chief Executive Masashi Muromachi told a news conference after the company again delayed its book-closing.

Toshiba, struggling to emerge from a $1.2 billion bookkeeping scandal, was unable to release its annual results on Monday as planned after finding additional errors including incorrect impairment charges on fixed assets at several subsidiaries and improperly timed booking of loss provisions at a U.S. subsidiary.

Muromachi said the U.S. unit was not its Westinghouse nuclear business.

All told, the errors will not be "huge," Muromachi said but he declined to say what the scale of the new problems might be.

($1 = 121.2800 yen)

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Writing by William Mallard; Editing by Louise Heavens)