What would Steve Jobs have made of the latest steps taken by the heirs to his iEmpire? The very idea that financial engineering might be part of the answer to Apple’s stock market funk would have been anathema to the great innovator. But that is what it has come to: like the rest of Silicon Valley, Apple is beating a path to the bond markets to juice its returns.

It is deeply paradoxical that companies swimming in cash should have become some of the best customers of Wall Street’s fixed income desks. Oracle and Cisco have about $80bn of cash and investments between them – but they also have $36bn of gross debt. What started for those companies as a way to pay for big acquisitions has since become an addiction. That Apple should think of borrowing when it has about $145bn of liquid assets at its disposal might seem even more surprising. Details, for now, are scarce, but the debt plan is part of a modified financial strategy – including an extra $50bn in extra stock repurchases – that Apple hopes will finally lay to rest the “shareholder unfriendly” stigma under with which it has long struggled.

The financial engineering has two attractions. One reflects the usual benefits that come with higher leverage: a lower tax bill thanks to tax-deductible interest payments, along with, in theory, greater returns for ordinary shareholders as debt is used to retire some of the company’s equity. More importantly, though, tech companies have had to resort to borrowing as an indirect way to tap their stranded offshore cash mountains.