- Australia's first brothel float has gone off with a bang,
with a little help from an infamous Hollywood madam.
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- The Daily Planet Ltd's shares proved to be a real turn
on for investors and stags, eager to get their hands on a stake in the
Melbourne brothel which hopes to soon be sponsoring an AFL team.
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- With madam Heidi Fleiss watching in Melbourne, The Daily
Planet shares hit the Australian Stock Exchange boards at 70 cents - well
above their 50 cent issue price.
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- From there the price inflated, ending its first day at
$1.09.
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- The company's chief executive, Andrew Harris, was delighting
in the fact that the large broking houses, which had snubbed the bordello
in the lead-up to the listing, jumped in for their piece of the action
today.
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- He said the credibility of The Daily Planet, which boasts
being the first brothel in the world to list on a stock exchange, had changed
completely.
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- "We have gone from 100 knockers to no knockers,"
he said.
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- "We are a genuine public company with high drive
and high interest and I've committed myself to the next five years to make
sure we create the biggest sex company in the world.
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- "To all the cynics - we are here, we have made it."
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- With its float now behind it, The Daily Planet has set
its sights on sponsoring an AFL team, after an unsuccessful attempt 20
years ago to back now-defunct club Fitzroy.
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- There are plenty of links with the AFL - Mr Harris is
the son of former long-serving Carlton president George Harris while fellow
director Shane Maguire is on the AFL Tribunal.
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- "Where in the past everybody has snubbed sponsorship
from us, we would love to look at an AFL side," Mr Harris said.
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- Ex-Hollywood madam, and Daily Planet consultant, Ms Fleiss
helped turn the listing into a media circus just by her flamboyant presence.
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- Having finally made it on to the ASX, nine years after
the idea of a float was first mooted, The Daily Planet is looking at expanding
into Perth, Brisbane and Sydney's western suburbs.
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- It may also open a second venue in Melbourne, where its
core asset, its namesake The Daily Planet, has an annual turnover of between
$6-9 million.
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- Of that amount, Mr Harris said, the company receives
$3 million in room booking fees.
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- "We do not take one cent from our working girls,"
he said.
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- "They are independent contractors and cannot discount
their services to (shareholders) because we don't control the money."
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- Mr Harris said The Daily Planet's future lay in Sydney,
where it intends setting up a one-stop adult venue that will include a
brothel, adult cinema, adult sex shops - what he described as a "sex
Disneyland".
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- "The (Prostitute Control Act) in Victoria is so
draconian we would never do anything else in the sex industry here,"
he said.
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- Although the float raised $3.75 million, less than its
$8.9 million original prospectus target, Mr Harris still has big plans
the grow The Daily Planet into a company with a $500 million market capitalisation.
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6366651%255E1702,00.html
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