Public Offering of Securities Insurance

A prospectus must explicitly confirm that the people responsible for it have taken reasonable care to make sure the information is true. So they, as well as the company and its directors, may face civil and criminal liabilities if the prospectus is inaccurate, incomplete or misleading particularly if they can’t prove that proper care was taken preparing it. In the case of false representation, imprisonment is a possibility in some jurisdictions.

Companies that want to offer their securities to the public, or trade their securities on a regulated market like the stock exchange, have to issue a prospectus. There are detailed rules about what has to be in a prospectus, what may or may not be left out and processes to follow in the case that anything material changes once issued or in the case an error is discovered.