By the end of November, more chief executives had lost their jobs or left them this year than during all of 2007, when 1,356 exited, according to the outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

That churn is very good for job recruiting firms, more popularly known as headhunters. Revenue for search firms worldwide was expected to grow by 8.7% in 2008 to $11.6 billion, according to the Association of Executive Search Consultants.

When it comes to finding chief executive officers, are headhunters worth all that money? The going rate to recruit a chief executive is typically a flat $1 million, which is about one-third of that CEO's first-year cash compensation. Do corporations get bang for those bucks in their stock price? Or do they do better when they perform the search themselves?

We measured the stock performance of 117 large companies that hired a chief executive during the past 10 years from outside their organization with the help of one the big four recruiters--Heidrick & Struggles, Korn/Ferry International, Russell Reynolds Associates and Spencer Stuart. We weighed them against the performance of 23 companies that did their own searches.

The upshot: Companies that hired a chief executive on their own fared better than companies that used headhunters. Corporate boards that trusted their own guts saw their company's stock realize a return 34% higher than the S&P 500 one year after their chief executive's date of hire (see table below). Only Korn/Ferry's searches matched that success over the same period. (We also measured other time periods, to prevent the data from being skewed by anomalies in company or stock market performance, or by news of a chief's departure.)

By now, everyone has heard about and debated the plight of the Big Three automakers and whether they should be saved. Here is a slightly different approach to the question, taken by looking at the amount of product currently available from global brands in a couple of other categories compared with automobiles. It might lend some interesting perspective to the debate.

I've picked two other categories, cellphones and computers. Both are products bought by substantial numbers of consumers, and both are products sold globally by major international companies. First some overall numbers:

These are all 2007 numbers. They'll likely be lower for 2008 and 2009

Now let's look at the number of global brands of each, available in the U.S.:

Major Cellphone Brands (8)

Apple
BlackBerry
LG
Motorola
Nokia
Palm
Motorola
Samsung
Sony Ericsson

Major Personal Computer Brands (7)

Apple
Dell
Hewlett-Packard
Lenovo (previously IBM)
Panasonic
Sony
Toshiba
Toshiba

Car Brands Available in the U.S. (40)

Audi
BMW
Buick
Cadillac
Chevrolet
Chrysler
Corvette
Dodge
Ferrari
Ford
Honda
Hummer
Hyundai
Infiniti
Jaguar
Jeep
Kia
Lamborghini
Land Rover
Lexus
Lincoln
Lotus
Maserati
Mazda
Mercedes-Benz
Mini
Mitsubishi
Nissan
Pontiac
Porsche
Saab
Saturn
Scion
Smart
Subaru
Suzuki
Tesla
Toyota
Volkswagen
Volvo

I imagine you know where I'm going with this. Unit sales in the U.S. for automobiles are only 25% of the number of computers sold, 11% of the number of cellphones sold. Yet the number of brands available is far greater, approximately five times as many. Of course, the argument for this is that there is a far greater need for variety among automobiles, because of size, cost, personal preference and so forth. I thought I would eliminate some of the variables and look at how many brands have four-door sedans in a price range of $20,000 to $35,000. There are 16 with 2009 models. Here they are:

Buick
Chevrolet
Chrysler
Dodge
Ford
Honda
Hyundai
Kia
Mazda
Nissan
Pontiac
Saab
Suzuki
Saturn
Toyota
Volkswagen

This still seems like a lot, but wait--it get's better (or worse). Within each of these brands, there are several different types of four-door sedans. For example, Toyota has the Avalon, Camry, Corolla, Prius and Yaris. If you're looking for a four-passenger car but want only two doors, Toyota offers another model, the Solaris.

You get the point. All of this is to raise a very simple question: Why do we even need three U.S. automobile companies? Clearly, U.S. consumers have far more choice already than they need.

If we look back at cellphones even five years ago, there were also Siemens (nyse: SI - news - people ), Alcatel, Ericsson and other brands. Those companies went out of the cellphone business. Twenty years ago there were more than 50 brands of personal computer. They have consolidated or have gone out of business too. Isn't this what should happen with the global automobile business?

The only thing standing in the way of that, and an appropriate rationalization of companies and brands, is government support. Without it, we would soon have a list of global auto companies that looked like the lists above for cellphones and computers.

The result of having too many companies is exactly what we are now seeing. Not enough companies can earn their cost of capital. But with government support, they can hang on, often for a very long time, which reduces profits throughout the industry, which leads to less investment, lower quality and less innovation. So if our government is going to aid and abet this poor outcome, perhaps it should think about supporting only one of these companies, or two at the most. We just don't need three. Period. What we need isless choice.

Michael E. Marks manages a private equity fund, Riverwood Capital, which invests in rapidly growing private companies in North America and emerging markets. Prior to Riverwood, Marks spent a year as a member of Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts and continued to serve as a senior adviser after he left to start his own fund. Preceding KKR, Marks served as chief executive officer of Flextronics, a leading electronics-manufacturing-services provider headquartered in San Jose, Calif. Marks sits on the boards of publicly traded SanDisk, Crocs, Schlumberger Limited and Sun Microsystems as well as nonprofits V Foundation for Cancer Research and the National Parks Conservation Association. He also teaches a course in global-supply-chain management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Sony is preparing for a bleak future for its electronics business. The Japanese manufacturer said Tuesday that it will slash 8,000 jobs in its electronics division and cut capital investment by 30.0% in the next fiscal year.

Analysts expect the electronics and entertainment giant's earnings to collapse in 2009 on a surging yen, investment losses, a supply glut of liquid crystal displays and digital cameras, and a slowdown in consumer spending in the economically depressed West.

Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) said in a statement that it is aiming to reap cost savings of over 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) a year by March 2010 through layoffs, scaling back investment plans, closing factories and outsourcing production. The company will shutter two overseas factories by the end of the current fiscal year in March, including a plant in Dax, France, that produces recording media. By the end of the following fiscal year in 2010, it indicated it aims to close another three or four plants. It will also cut its temporary work force.

With Americans and Europeans now more interested in saving like the Japanese than buying their gadgets, CLSA analyst Atul Goyal forecast last week that Sony's operating profit for fiscal 2009 will plunge from 90.0 billion yen ($972.3 million) to zero, and the company will net a loss of 50 billion yen ($540.2 million). The yen's surge this year has eroded Sony's overseas earnings, and the company has suffered steep portfolio losses due to the country's slumping stock market.

A price collapse in LCDs and digital cameras has similarly pummeled earnings at South Korean archrival Samsung Electronics (other-otc: SSNLF - news - people ) (See "No Christmas Presents For Samsung"). A Samsung executive told investors on Monday that it will reduce capital spending to a range of 7 trillion won ($4.84 billion) to 8 trillion won ($5.53 billion) next year, down from 10 trillion won ($6.9 billion).

However, cash-rich Samsung has fared better of late than heavily-indebted Sony, boosted by the won's slide, which has made South Korean exports cheaper.

Aside from the dismal economic environment, Goyal said Sony has made strategic blunders--it didn't discount enough to clear its inventories over the crucial U.S. Black Friday shopping weekend, whereas competitor Sharp (other-otc: SHCAY - news - people ) slashed prices more aggressively, he said. Sony also ceded TV sales to Samsung and digital camera sales to Canon (nyse: CAJ - news - people ) during the post-Thanksgiving shopping period. If the company decides to clear out its bloated inventories in the first half of 2009, then prices will further collapse, he added.