If you still think blogs don’t have a place as a valid public communication channel for communicating information related to a company’s finances, or a specific event such as an acquisition or sale, think again.
Here’s a good example of how you can comfortably talk about such topics in a blog post.
Earlier this week, Marc Andreessen, chairman of IT automation company Opsware, wrote a post on his blog in which he talked about the sale of his company to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion.
His post includes a concise history of the firm as he sees it, his thanks to quite a few people plus some opinion on what the deal means to Opsware and to H-P.
It’s the type of commentary about a topic where communication typically is tightly controlled and, indeed, subject to regulatory oversight if you’re a publicly-listed company. It would make some investor relations communicators nervous, never mind the lawyers.
But go the the end of the post and you’ll find this text:
The lawyers made me add the following:
This blog entry is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy or the solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. [...] This blog entry contains forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainty. [...]
I’ve truncated the full text here simply because I want to highlight the key phrases relating to a financial disclaimer notice for a blog post. The full disclaimer text contains wording that’s complementary to the usual type of disclaimer you would see in the typically formal communication about an acquisition, such as is included in the press release issued by Hewlett-Packard.
A good example of looking at what you can do rather than what you can’t.
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