Business Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

REAL ESTATE
ANTITRUST REGULATORS SUE ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS
The National Association of Realtors was sued by antitrust enforcers who accused the trade group of trying to restrain competition by restricting Internet brokers’ access to listings of homes for sale.
The suit, filed by the Justice Department in federal court in Chicago, challenges the group’s policy of allowing traditional real estate brokers to exclude their listings from other brokers’ Web sites. It may be propping up an old-fashioned business model and harming consumers looking to lower costs, the suit says.
The association’s policy “stifles competition to advantage some of its members at the expense of home buyers and sellers across the country,” the deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, J. Bruce McDonald, said at a news conference in Washington yesterday. “Consumers benefit when real estate brokers are free to compete vigorously by offering innovative services.”
The lawsuit is part of a broader effort by U.S. authorities to open the real estate business to more competition, Mr. McDonald said. Internet brokers, who seek to cut costs by letting customers do much of the work of traditional real estate agents, sprung up in the late 1990s and now operate in all major metropolitan areas.
The Chicago-based realtors group announced a revised policy earlier yesterday that it said responded to Justice Department concerns. The association has more than 1 million members who work in residential and commercial real estate.
– Bloomberg News
AUCTION HOUSES
TAUBMAN FAMILY GIVES UP CONTROL OF SOTHEBY’S
Sotheby’s Holdings, the world’s largest publicly traded auction house, said the Taubman family, which has controlled the auctioneer since 1983, has given up its super-voting stock.
The family received $168 million in cash and 7.1 million shares of common stock for their 14 million Class B shares. The shares the Taubmans owned, equivalent to a 22% stake, gave them control of 62% of the voting shares in the Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based company.
– Bloomberg News
ENTERTAINMENT
NETFLIX EXPECTS TO HAVE 5 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS BY 2006
Online DVD rental pioneer Netflix said yesterday it expects to have 5 million subscribers in 2006, one year earlier than the company had predicted. Netflix said it has also set a new goal of reaching 20 million subscribers in five to seven years.
– Dow Jones Newswires
IN BRIEF
Borrowing by American consumers increased for a second month in July as Americans financed new cars at discounted prices, Federal Reserve figures showed … General Motors will stop offering employee discounts to all buyers September 30 and turn to lower list prices to help it sell 2006 models after sales fell in August … Ford Motor named Mark Fields, a Harvard business school graduate who had led Mazda Motor and Ford of Europe by his early 40s, to steer its money losing Americas unit … Sears demoted its chief executive and put its chairman, Edward Lampert, in charge of merchandise and marketing, as it reported that net income for its fiscal second quarter increased 4.5% … In its second management shake-up this summer, Bank of America said yesterday that its chief financial officer, Marc Oken, is stepping down and will be replaced by Alvaro de Molina, the head of investment-banking unit Banc of America Securities … Caremark Rx, the second-biggest American pharmacy benefit manager, will pay $137.5 million to settle allegations that its AdvancePCS unit cheated the government by taking kickbacks from companies supplying medicine to federal programs … Shares of eBay fell after reports the company may buy Web telephone operator Skype Technologies for as much as $5 billion … Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation agreed to buy IGN Entertainment, which runs Web sites for video-game fans, for $650 million to expand the company’s Internet business … Google said it hired Vinton Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI who is credited with key technical work related to the development of the Internet, adding to the Web search company’s roster of established technology luminaries … The search engine company also said yesterday it added 17 more bankers to the roster for its $4.1 billion secondary offering of 14.159 million shares, a number taken from the decimal places of the mathematical ratio pi, 3.14159.
– Bloomberg News, Dow Jones Newswires, and Associated Press