>I suspect that they were thinking nobody would catch them like this. Or that even if they did, people would have forgotten by the IPO pop.

Yeah true. Still seems like a legally asinine thing to do. It was really as simple as "I did not see eye to eye with Apollo" and you can power trip all you want after that.

I don't know if there is a slander case here, but a C level executive shouldn't even risk it to begin with.

likely not, given how strong libel/slander laws in the U.S. are. Funnily enough, correcting the story so quickly before damages were done may have weakened a case.