"With a $145 billion cash hoard, Apple could acquire Facebook, Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo — and still have more than $10 billion left over. Despite its uncommonly flush balance sheet, Apple borrowed money on Tuesday for the first time in nearly two decades. In a record bond deal, the company raised $17 billion, according to a person briefed on the deal, paying interest rates that rival those of debt issued by the United States Treasury. Apple’s corporate-finance maneuver raises a riddle: Why would a company with so much cash even bother to issue debt? — The answer has a lot to do with the frenzied state of the bond markets. Companies are issuing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to exploit historically low interest rates and strong investor demand for bonds as an alternative to money market funds and Treasury bills that paying virtually nothing." - × × ×