About ten years ago, Bankrate (NASDAQ: RATE) became a public company, as the IPO market was in full-steam (a traditional financial information provider, the company went to the Web in the mid 1990s). Well, now the company has decided to go private.

The private equity sponsor, Apax Partners LLP, has agreed to buy Bankrate for about $571 million. The share price comes to $28.50.

The typical drill for a private equity firm is to: a) borrow lots of money to buy a company; b) improve operations (usually this means firing people); and c) take the company public so as to make a big profit.

The problem: the IPO market has been lackluster over the years.

Well, private equity firms have a solution – at least for deals in Europe. There, they are tapping the bond market (this is according to a recent story in Bloomberg.com).

Basically, interest rates are very low. As a result, the spread between government bonds and corporate bonds has shrunk.

For example, in London, the private equity firms Texas Pacific and Apax did a 1.4 billion-euro bond offering for TIM Hellas. With the money, the private equity firms paid themselves a one-time dividend.

Some of the debt consisted of PIK notes. This means interest can be paid in more notes or even issuing stock. Basically, this is high-risk debt.

But, so long as bond investors are willing to take the risks, private equity firms are willing to take the money.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates DealProfiles.com.