Having spent many years in the corporate world, I can tell you that it is normal operating procedure to publicly understate how far along negotiations are.

An example: Even after the AT&T/Cingular merger was a "done deal" (which I knew about almost a year before it was announced), I kept seeing advertisements from either company more or less attacking the other one. In the background, they were finalizing details on becoming the same company, but publicly they both kept operating as competitors.