A former senior executive of Belgo Group, is to stand trial on insider dealing charges relating to the takeover of the restaurant chain more than a decade ago.

Timothy Power, 43, appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday where he was refused bail until his trial, which was set for December.

Mr Power of East Sheen, South West London, denies four counts of insider trading relating to his alleged activity during the £9.8 million sale of Belgo to Lonsdale Holdings in 1997.

As Belgo's operations director in the late 1990s, Mr Power was involved in the takeovers of several famous London restaurants including The Ivy, Le Caprice and Daphne's.

He enjoyed a meteoric rise in the restaurant business after starting out as a barman. Mr Power's marriage to Chantal Brenninkmeyer, whose family own the C&A clothes chain, ended in divorce in 1998.

After shedding several key assets, a slimmed down Belgo Group was sold to Tragus, the private equity house that owns Café Rouge and Bella Italia, as part of a £140 million restaurant deal last year.

Mr Power is being prosecuted by the Department for Business and Regulatory Reform (BERR) whose precursor, the Department for Trade and Industry, handled insider dealing prosecutions until they were taken over by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2001.

The FSA, which is not involved in Mr Power's case, has launched four insider dealing prosecutions this year including its largest operation to date that saw the agency arrest eight people in a co-ordinated swoop. The eight, which included a back office worker at UBS and a contractor at Cazenove, were bailed pending further questioning.

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