[maiar]

It doesn’t shield small business owners in practice, though. Bank loans tend to require personal liability, and there are ways to pierce the corporate veil when the company is provably one person. So individuals get only a small amount of protection in practice. Even if you fail in good faith, there’s a good chance that your life and reputation are ruined.

On the other hand, large companies are basically private armies in which the presumably passive shareholders are so distant from the actions taken on their benefit that people almost never go to jail unless they are deliberately thrown to the wolves by shareholders or superiors.