Shareholders in BMC Software will receive $6.9bn to sell the corporate-software developer to a group of private equity firms. But the buyers, led by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital, only intend to pay $1.25bn in cash out of their own pockets. The rest will come from debt raised by BMC to finance its takeover.

The little-noticed acquisition is another milestone in the return of cheap debt and higher-risk deals to Wall Street: The cash put down by BMC's private equity buyers is the lowest as a percentage of the purchase price of any buyout with loans exceeding $500m since 2008, according to data-provider Thomson Reuters.