Borrowing the remaining $15 billion needed to buy out existing Dell shareholders (and provide the leverage to make the deal attractive to private-equity bidders) may be trickier. Firms have recently been able to issue junk-rated bonds at rock-bottom yields but the depth of investors' interest is difficult to gauge, says Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School. Tapping banks may be tougher still: new rules make it costly for them to extend loans for LBOs.

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