> Instead, the companies are simply taking on debt and keeping it on their balance sheet. Yes, my example is an admitted oversimplification. I was directly ans

> Instead, the companies are simply taking on debt and keeping it on their balance sheet. Yes, my example is an admitted oversimplification. I was directly answering the question "why would a company use debt to finance a buy back?", not "why would a company use debt to finance a buy back and then leave that debt on their balance sheet for an extended period of time?" Although I suspect the answer to that question is that they didn't want to leave profit on the table and wanted to continue riding out the bull run, then got caught by the fastest bear market in history and weren't able to get out at a profit. Or that they believed they could eventually service the debt without having to reissue shares at all and ran out of time because of the crash.