From Barrons' story "Expensive Junk" posted on Apr 9:
"Another disconcerting development: Numerous junk bonds have been sold in the past year or so to pay a dividend to a company's equity holders, which often is a leveraged buyout firm. For example, Cypress Merchant Banking Partners bought Communications & Power Industries for about $300 million in January 2004 using $200 million of debt and $100 million of equity. But Cypress has little economic interest left in the company because in February the tech firm's parent, CPI Holdco, sold $80 million of notes and used about $75 million of the proceeds to pay a dividend to Cypress and a handful of company executives."