

Public offering of bonds painless compared to shares - wesleyd
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article6586951.ece

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mdasen
The difference is that shares are a portion of the company that you're giving
away along with the rights of partial ownership and such. Selling bonds is
essentially like getting loans. You find that a bank will lend you the money
you want at 7% interest and that investors will buy your 6% interest bonds.
So, you sell the bonds to the investors and your costs are lower.

With stock, they get a share of your company and if it does better than
expected, they get more. With bonds, it's fixed. Should your company go under,
they're entitled to be paid before your shareholders are. And if you own the
company, that means that the bondholders will get their money back before you
get to see anything from the failed business.

While bonds are by no means no-risk items, they're very different from stocks
and more akin to the loans that a bank would make.

