[adventured]

Apple is a bad example. They took out that pile of debt primarily to avoid repatriation costs as they sought to return some capital to shareholders. It made perfect financial sense and it was not a manipulation of the market. They could reasonably afford to do it and it posed almost zero risk to the business.

Shareholders were clearly happy with receiving slightly less capital (that which will be lost to debt costs) in exchange for receiving it sooner. That is not a bad exchange, so long as the debt cost is not steep.

Apple can trivially afford their low-cost debt, both out of their extreme cashflow and their cash hoard.

[_ea1k]

I agree with you in the sense that the debt was primarily a tax optimization strategy for them.

However, I still see it as a bit of a problem. I think it is partially a symptom of a market that has become too focused on a single metric (P/E ratio). The result is that reducing shares is more important than boosting book value.

I'd love for this hypothesis to be proven wrong, but I'm afraid that it is part of what is driving some very questionable practices.