Your're right. The safe harbor statement limits the
liability of the
speaker.
But, without it Schwartz was still the CEO of Sun, which
I'm sure
is why he was surprised with McNealy's statement.
Without a safe harbor
statement, the statement of the CEO
is simply the statement of the CEO without
the limitation of
liability.
If investors had to worry about what was a
"real" or
"non-personal" or "official" statement the system would be a
mess.
Hence the SEC rules.
A statement by an officer of a corporation regarding
their company is just that. No caveats, and in some cases
even a "safe harbor"
clause doesn't limit their liability.
Otherwise you would have seen "Not
Really" tacked at the
end of every Madoff Investment Securities
statement.
But, your honor, we left the safe harbor clause
off
every profit announcement and replaced it with "Don't
Panic"
-- nyarlathotep [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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