Danny broke up a thread to create a new one named Bad Reasons To Want A Top Ranking on the 3rd of this month. Mikkel posted that a client of his wanted to increase the value of a company before it is sold, and one way to do that was to increase the client's ranking. Although the thread did not list many other bad reasons to want top rankings, it did discuss this one reason.
Ammon Johns tells a story of one of his clients looking to buy a company based on rank. To make a long story short, that company they were looking to buy was ranking well due to a single seo tactic. A few months later, that company's rankings dropped. Good thing they did not buy them. Ammon continues to explain that you should not look at rankings alone, but rather the traffic over time of a site.
Interesting thread, check it out at Search Engine Watch Forums.