holy-valuation bat-man! microsoft buys aquantive

Microsoft (Ticker: MSFT) announced that it was buying its Seattle neighbor aquantive (Ticker: AQNT) this morning for a whopping $6 billion!!!!!  Aquantive is best known for its two main business units – Avenue A (media planning agency) and AtlasDMT (ad server).  Congrats to all my friends who work their now and worked in the past and still own the stock.  All I have to say is wow.   MSFT is paying a 133x multiple of net income and more importantly 46x multiple of this year’s EBITDA!  From my M&A experience that’s a one hell of a multiple.  If that multiple was applied to some of the companies I hold stock, let me just say my wife would get off my back about all my gadget spending.