6. Tim Power – More Than He Could Chew

The Brenninkmeyers are the Dutch family dynasty behind the C&A clothing empire. Today, a Swiss-based holding company called the Cofra Group controls the business, which traces its history back to 1841, although its supervisory board still contains four of the Brenninkmeyer family. The business runs major retail operations throughout the world – in the United States, Asia and Europe – but it has also moved into financial services, real estate, private equity, and more recently runs a renewable energy portfolio. The close-knit family’s combined personal wealth is estimated at something like £2.5 billion.

Into this family (motto: ‘Unity makes strength’), in 1988, married Tim Power. And his life would change forever.

It must have seemed like an extraordinary result for Power, going overnight from a lowly barman to someone for whom money would seemingly never be a problem again. By marrying Chantal Brenninkmeyer, heiress to the dynasty, Power would be set for life. Only it did not turn out that way.

Timothy Power was born in the mid-1960s. His father had a successful career as a civil engineer, which included building the mass transit system in Hong Kong, but son Tim was not destined to follow in his footsteps. With poor A level grades, Power junior opted for catering college before embarking on a career in the hospitality trade. But what a career!

Power started out as a barman in a King’s Road bar called Henry J Beans. An ‘American-style bar and grill’, it was to set the pattern for Power’s working life. He learned the ropes and moved to Paris where he became a manager of the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, a restaurant just off the Champs-Élysées. One review describes it thus: ‘The sounds of American rock music fills the Americana-laden walls of this country and western-style bar. And remember, one pizza is generally enough for two people.’

But it was not enough for the 6ft 7in Power. He harboured ambitions to be ‘bigger’ than British restaurant guru Terence Conran, and had heady plans of world domination. And while Power’s father was wealthy, his marriage to Brenninkmeyer put him in a different league.

But it was not all good. Within a year, Power claims he was unhappy. ‘Her family were very strange and controlling,’ he told an interviewer later. ‘Everything was done for you. If you wanted to book a flight, if you wanted a chauffeur, you spoke to someone. It was horrifying for someone who was only 23.’ As a result of his unhappiness with his new-found wealth and freedom, Power threw himself into his work, and by his own admission, was ‘extremely’ badly behaved.

Power then got a job at yet another US-themed chain of restaurants, this time owned by flamboyant Texan millionaire Charles Burnett III. Burnett was, and remains, something of a character, and in 1999 this nephew of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu was included in the Guinness Book of World Records for an offshore water speed record of 137 mph. Power worked for his restaurant business and also ran the tycoon’s powerboat team. ‘We would travel all over the world in private jets,’ noted Power. ‘We would go to New Orleans for the day. We’d go to New York for the weekend. There were a couple of occasions when I woke up in bed and thought: “Who’s this? Where am I? And why is my car parked at a funny angle in the street below?”’

Power’s life was starting to spin out of control. His first business venture was to set up a bar/club in Chelsea’s King’s Road called Embargo. It bombed. Despite money being no barrier and his experience in the trade, the bar lost £80,000 in five months and closed.

It is difficult to avoid alcohol if you work in the hospitality trade, and Power could not say no. By 1995, aware of the impact his drinking was having on his marriage to Chantal, and on his two daughters, Chelsea and Savannah, he signed up to Alcoholics Anonymous.

A year later, in 1996, came Power’s big break when he joined the Belgo restaurant chain as operations manager. Belgo specializes in Belgian cooking and Belgian beer – ‘moules and frites’ – and it is also noted for its waiting staff who dress as monks. Founded in 1992 by French-Canadian Denis Blais and Anglo-Belgian Andre Plisnier, the business was bought in 1996 by serial entrepreneur Luke Johnson (he sold his stake in 2005, and today the business is run by Tragus Ltd). The business started as a small north London affair, but soon opened branches in central London and throughout the United Kingdom. Business was good.

Power was in his element and put his years of experience into practice. He spoke in lofty tones about his ‘one-man crusade against mediocrity’, and he certainly worked long, 16-hour days. Yet while he was sometimes described as ‘an excellent motivator’, his methods were also said to be ‘brutal’. A notorious disciplinarian, he would bawl people out for trivial matters. ‘I hate things that are done badly,’ he told the London Evening Standard in 1998. ‘I am a very harsh critic of everyone and everything – myself more than anyone else.’

He also, apparently, prided himself on not speaking to anyone on the phone for longer than 60 seconds. ‘Phone calls are generally unproductive unless they are telling you something,’ he said. ‘If you get 100 phone calls in a day and you keep them to a minute instead of two, that’s another eight hours a week you can devote to something more useful.’

The man was driven. He played hard too. Yet he was also turning the Belgo business around. He fired most of the management team and a third of the staff, but in a year, the company’s profits almost doubled. Power was given a shareholding and made a director. He was finally coming out from Chantal’s shadow.

Then, in December 1997, Belgo was involved in a ‘reverse takeover’ by cash shell Lonsdale Holdings in a deal worth £9.8 million. It then took over three fashionable restaurants, Daphne’s (a favourite of Princess Diana’s), The Collection and Pasha, in a £10 million deal. A few months later, Belgo paid £15 million for three more of London’s most prestigious restaurants – the Ivy (frequented by the likes of David and Victoria Beckham), Le Caprice and J Sheekey. As operations manager, Power made £500,000 from the takeover, and promptly bought himself a Ferrari. It is said that at one point he was updating his car every three or four weeks. Why not?!

It was a heady period in Britain, and in London in particular. City bonuses were big, the dotcom boom was making a few people very rich indeed, and the gossip columns were full of salacious tales of debauchery, drink and drugs among the capital’s elite. Even the new British government, headed by Tony Blair, was getting in on the act, hosting lavish receptions for the country’s hip and trendy fashion-setters. Cool Britannia was the call to arms, and the likes of Tim Power revelled in it.

In some ways, Power was the epitome of the new-look Britain – a modest background but now taking on the world. And on the face of it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Britain needs more people to have this mindset. Power had made it. Operations director at a firm running some of London’s and the world’s finest restaurants, hobnobbing with the likes of Elton John and George Michael, Power was in his element.

But his professional success came at a heavy price in his personal life. In 1998 he discovered that his wife was having an affair, with a City trader called Tim Lowe. Power apparently managed to track down Lowe’s number and threatened to kill him. It was clear Power’s relationship with Chantal was over. The two divorced and she won custody of the two children. It was, Power says, a bitter blow.

But worse was to come. Perhaps, in part, slightly antagonized by Power’s death threat, Lowe proceeded to contact the London Stock Exchange, reporting Power for insider trading. It was a serious allegation, and one that was to have major ramifications for him.

In the meantime, Power quit Belgo. Although there was no suggestion his departure was linked with the police probe, his bosses now claim he ‘jumped before he was pushed’. At the time, the arrangement was dressed up as an amicable split. Later that year, the hapless Power reportedly ‘lost a fortune on the stockmarket’.

But he was not finished in the bar/club game. In 2000, he set up another bar venture in Leeds – somewhat improbably with Goldie, the British musician-cum-DJ, and former football hardman-turned-actor Vinne Jones. Power also set up various other businesses, called Linpower, Powerlin and Forward Choice plc.

It is actually quite typical for entrepreneurs on the up to associate themselves with ‘C’ and ‘D’ list celebrities. Money brings them opportunities, and Power, managing a series of high-profile London restaurants, would have come into contact with a whole host of minor celebs.

It was around this time that Power’s old boss Charles Burnett got in touch – perhaps to talk about old times, maybe to discuss an upcoming business project. Unbeknown to Power, and at the direction of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Burnett was packing a hidden microphone in an attempt to extract a confession about the insider trading. The walls were closing in. Yet before the DTI case came to court, Power was up on other charges relating to his beloved Ferrari.

In August 1999, a police officer in Aberarth, west Wales, spotted a tax disc on the Ferrari 355 which actually belonged to a Mercedes owned by a Bristol car rental firm. Later police checks on the Ferrari found it to have a different tax disc, this time from a blue BMW convertible owned by Paul Smith Ltd in Nottingham. In December 1999, the car once again came to the attention of the police when it was found parked on double yellow lines in Trafalgar Square, London, allegedly with no tax disc at all.

Of all places to leave a car on a double yellow line in London, about the least sensible is Trafalgar Square. It is one of the busiest thoroughfares in London, teeming with tourists, buses, taxis, cars and police officers offering directions, and most normal people would not dream of parking a car there. And if they did they could be fairly confident that it would not be there for long. It is an insight into the way Power’s mind was working at the time: it was as if normal rules did not apply.

On each of the three occasions the police noticed his car, it was carrying the ‘P9WER’ number plate which had applied to a Porsche 911 owned by Power, but which had lapsed in March 1999. Whatever was going on, the courts wanted to hear about it, and Power was set a hearing date at Blackfriars Crown Court for October. He did not show up. An arrest warrant was duly issued, and Power was eventually hauled before the court on five counts of fraudulently using a registration plate and three counts of fraudulently using a vehicle licence on his £70,000 car.

Despite his interest in cars, Power told the court he knew nothing about the purchasing of tax discs. ‘I was very, very spoilt and cosseted as far as that goes,’ he said. ‘When I was married to my wife everything was taken care of by the bank she owned.’ He also claimed that he normally ‘relied on chauffeurs’ to sort out matters such as road tax. Unimpressed, the judge sentenced Power to 120 hours community service.

Bizarrely, and somewhat ironically, in 2001 Power cropped up in the news, again to do with cars – this time as part of a team planning to stage a ‘Gumball rally’ illegal car race across the United States. The plan was to run the thing with an entrepreneur called Sunny Dhown, who had a conviction for drink-driving.

It was not the end of Power’s legal woes, either. In February 2002, he was sentenced to two years at Leeds Crown Court for theft and obtaining money transfers by deception. But the worst was yet to come for Power – and in quite dramatic style.

In April 2008, Power travelled into the United Kingdom on a United Airlines flight to watch Chelsea play football, apparently at the invitation of then head coach Avram Grant. But before Power managed to get out of his first-class seat, four armed police officers boarded the plane and arrested him on charges of insider trading. Power would not be watching the football that day – he would be spending it in a police cell. And two days later, after being denied bail, he was moved to Wandsworth Prison in south London for a five-month pre-trial wait, alongside some of Britain’s most dangerous inmates.

HM Prison Wandsworth is a category B/C men’s prison and one of the toughest in the United Kingdom. It is the place where William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was executed, and has also been home to hardened criminals such as 1960s gang leader Ronnie Kray, ‘Great train robber’ Ronnie Biggs and notorious inmate Charles Bronson. In December 1999, an inspection report stated that there was ‘a pervasive culture of fear’ at the jail, and that staff were ‘callous and uncaring’ and guilty of intimidation, racism and sexism.

It would be tough work for the 6ft 7in Power to keep his head down. ‘One of my cell mates was a Jamaican yardie who had killed a policeman,’ he later recalled. ‘He had several bullet wounds and stab wounds. There were several fights, normally in the dinner queue, and I once saw a guy trying to cut another guy’s head off. I decided the best way to protect myself was to say as little as possible and stay in my cell.’

The maximum jail sentence for insider dealing is seven years. So Power had plenty to think about. When his case finally came to trial, it was the United Kingdom’s first insider dealing trial for four years. Southwark Crown Court heard that Euan Carlisle, a former company director, had used confidential information passed to him by a senior employee of Belgo – that is, Power – to buy shares ahead of two crucial company announcements. ‘The information related to two very important events in the life of Belgo,’ said Sarah Whitehouse, for the prosecution. ‘It was information which was bound, when it became public, to affect the share price.’ The insider dealing occurred ahead of the £10 million reverse takeover of Belgo in December 1997 and the announcement of the restaurant acquisitions the following May.

On both occasions, said Whitehouse ‘the share price went up [after it became public knowledge] and he sold all the shares, making a handsome profit. This sort of conduct, known as insider dealing, is a criminal offence. The passing on of confidential information by those inside a company, and the dealing in shares on the strength of that information, is a fraud. It is cheating.’ Whitehouse added that the two men had numerous phone calls leading up to the public pronouncements and dismissed talk that this was down to pure chance.

The most salacious aspect of the case came to light during pre-trial legal argument. Lawyer Simon Williams, at the time an investigator for the DTI, was asked how Power’s name first emerged during investigations into Belgo and Lonsdale share dealings. ‘From recollection,’ he said, ‘I think there was someone called Chantal Brenninkmeyer who had been married to Mr Power and had some association… a love triangle, or whatever you want to call it.’ The headline writers were delighted.

After the Crown was given permission to include the damning audio transcripts of Power’s bugged phone calls in its case, he changed his plea from not guilty to guilty, admitting two counts of insider trading between 15 October 1997 and 20 May the following year. In mitigation, Power’s lawyer Jonathan Goldring said his client ‘socialized in very wealthy circles but was never himself in the financial Ivy League. Now he is broken, he is single, he is unemployable and he is a convicted criminal.’ He also read a statement from Power, who tried to blame his wife’s infidelity for his own law-breaking. The judge was having none of it.

Passing sentence, Judge James Wadsworth QC said:

The offences to which you pleaded guilty are serious because they are a grave breach of trust by someone at the centre of a company which is going to cause sensitive movement on the Stock Exchange and upon which other people are relying for honesty and transparency. You went deliberately behind it.

The judge continued, ‘Matters were made worse because you did it on two separate occasions in respect of two quite separate items of knowledge.’

The facts that the offence took place 12 years previously, and that Power had already served 163 days in prison, led the judge to sentence him to 18 months suspended for two years. The DTI, by now the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, said it hoped the case would ‘provide some deterrent’. After the case, Power claimed he only changed his plea to get a lighter sentence. He said he had plans to return to Italy, where he lives with his girlfriend.

Despite all that happened to him, Power remains remarkably unrepentant. ‘I haven’t had a fall from grace,’ he told one newspaper following the conviction. ‘I’m the luckiest man alive. I’ve learnt what not to do and who not to be around and that’s a valuable lesson. I’ve never been happier.’ Power’s psychiatrist deserves a pay rise.

SOURCES

Companies House, www.companieshouse.gov.uk

Daily Telegraph, 26 February 2009

Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2009

Daily Telegraph, 7 March 2009

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, www.berr.gov.uk

Financial Services Authority, www.fsa.gov.uk

Guardian, 25 February 2009

Herbert Smith, Financial regulation briefing, May 2009

Independent, 28 July 2000

Independent, 9 February 2001

Independent, 21 March 2001

London Evening Standard, 8 February 2001

London Evening Standard, 13 May 2002

London Evening Standard, 2 March 2009

Reuters, 2 March 2009

Sunday Times, 12 December 2001

The Times, 23 February 2009

The Times, 26 February 2009