The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition TSX Venture Exchange capital pool companies will continue to weigh down the junior exchange unless reforms are enacted. The Globe's Ahmad Hathout writes the TSX-V composite index closed Wednesday at a record low 584. "Things are a hell of a lot worse than what that index shows," said Tony Simon, co-founder of the Venture Capital Markets Association. The capital pool company program, or CPC, began in 1986 as a way to provide an alternative path for private venture companies to go public. Some of these CPCs have negative working capital, which should render them dead except for the fact that they are paying the listing fee of $200,000 a year to remain trading. Newsletter writer John Kaiser says CPCs became a "big business" when the resource-focused Vancouver and Alberta stock exchanges merged in 1999. He said that helped "dilute the exchange with too many 'pretend' companies." The death of companies -- which happens when it finds a target asset, fails and then can't fund its activities any longer -- does not happen because the venture exchange's working capital requirements are not enforced and the companies are allowed to continue to exist.