Microsoft has done something it has never done before, it sold bonds to raise capital; a lot of capital. While banking on its premium credit rating Microsoft was able to sell the bonds at only a slight premium to those sold by the government.
Microsoft pulled in $3.75 billion dollars but what it will be used for is anyone"s guess. While Microsoft has not stated why it needed to raise capital a strong possibility would be for a cash acquisition.
Microsoft does not need the money for operating costs with approximately 25 billion in cash according to their last 10-Q filing; an acquisition seems quite probable. Could this be related to its potential bid for Yahoo? Only the folks in Redmond know the answer to that but they just received a boatload of cash and no one seems to know for what purpose.