The oldest profession finally caught up with its younger siblings yesterday with the flotation on the Australian stock market of the world’s first publicly listed brothel.
Daily Planet is not the most conventional of companies. Its receptionists are all called Lois Lane, its share prospectus is full of soft-focus pictures of naked models and its core activities take place in 18 bedrooms with names such as Xanadu and Venus.
Its chief executive officer Andrew Harris insisted last night that it was no different from other publicly-listed companies. ”We are a blue chip, well-established business with a rock-solid reputation,” he said. ”We’ve been around for 30 years and we have proved the cynics wrong again and again.”
The market certainly seemed to think that sex was a sure bet yesterday. Trading opened at 70c (28p) a share, well above the issue price of 50c, and the stock closed at A$1,09.
To reassure investors worried about getting involved with the sex industry, Mr Harris said that none of its revenues came directly from prostitution. Visitors to its premises on the suitably-named Horne Street in Melbourne pay A$120 an hour room rent to Daily Planet and a separate fee to the sex workers, whom Mr Harris described as ”independent contractors”.
The company is planning to raise A$9-million from the share offer to help pay off its debts and acquire a new brothel in Sydney. Prostitution is decriminalised in most Australian states and Daily Planet is also planning branches in Brisbane and Perth.
It is also planning to expand overseas and has recruited Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss to help its push into America.
Mr Harris said that the company had first planned a listing in 1994 but had been held up by bureaucratic obstruction. ”Till now we’ve had every obstacle that you could put in our way. The institutional world did not want a brothel on the stock exchange.”
The company has also had to watch out for the lawyers of DC Comics, whose Superman cartoons provided the inspiration for Daily Planet’s name, logo, and receptionists. Mr Harris is not worried about the situation: the brothel has already bought up the Australian copyright to the phrases ”Daily Planet” and ”Lois Lane”. -Guardian Unlimited Â