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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

The TSX Venture Exchange closed up 3.64 points to 810.92 Thursday. Steven Mintz has filed a preliminary prospectus to list his first capital pool shell, 22 Capital Corp. The shell is selling a $600,000 initial public offering of six million shares at 10 cents, through Industrial Alliance Securities Inc.

22 Capital also has 4.1 million escrowed shares, which it sold at five cents last month. Mr. Mintz, 50, holds one million of these shares. He is an accountant in Toronto. This is his first time as a shell president, but he has some experience as a shell director. First, he was on the board of Sandra Cowan's capital pool shell, Skyberry Capital Corp., which in March, 2011, launched a Kentucky coal miner called Lipari Energy Inc. (Lipari has since gone private.) Second, Mr. Mintz was a director of Jesse Kaplan's capital pool shell, Rockstar Capital Corp., which in November, 2012, launched First Global Data Ltd. (FGD: $0.90), an on-line money transfer business. More recently, Mr. Mintz was a director of Anton Konovalov's capital pool shell, the grandly named Dominion General Investment Corp., which in August, 2016, launched Hampton Financial Corp. (HFC: $0.55). Hampton Financial owns the unprofitable brokerage firm Hampton Securities Ltd. The subscribers to 22 Capital's IPO would probably be hoping that Mr. Mintz does a better job of finding a qualifying transaction than did Ms. Cowan, Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Konovalov. None of their shells gave its IPO shareholders sufficient opportunity to get out of their investment with a profit, following the closing of a QT. For instance, the not-so-grand Dominion General sold IPO shares at $1, and Hampton Financial has never traded above that. One of the other shells, Rockstar Capital, sold IPO shares at 10 cents, then it rolled back 1 for 3 in connection with its QT, so the break-even price for its IPO shareholders became 30 cents. First Global traded mostly under 30 cents for four years, and it began rising to its current price level only four months ago. Shell IPO investors should not have to wait this long for profit-taking opportunities.

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