Why Acquisitions Fail
"Picture this, you are one of 600 firms in your software industry niche, and you decide to sell the company. You are thinking “no problem,” with 600 companies in my space I’ll be acquired in a heart beat. You may be in for a surprise. Companies don’t sell for a variety of reasons."

The part about bogus comparables is the most striking. Remember how some analysts insisted on valuing web visitors, page views or time spent on site? It came very close to valuing companies on the basis of their bandwidth bill ("as company Acme.com had a 4.75 Tb/month bandwidth consumption and sold for M275$, it is safe to assume Xyz.com will be worth ...").