A former senior manager at Pace Micro Technology has been ordered to pay a £250,000 penalty for insider dealing in shares.

James Parker was found to have made £120,000 using confidential information about the Saltaire-based firm.

Mr Parker was initially ordered to pay a £300,000 penalty after he was found guilty by the Financial Services Authority's Regula-tory Decisions Committee.

He appealed to the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal against the decision. The tribunal upheld the case against him but reduced the penalty by £50,000.

The tribunal found that Mr Parker engaged in market abuse between February 27 and March 4, 2002, when dealing in and spread betting on shares in Pace, where he worked as credit risk and treasury manager.

The FSA found that Mr Parker had sold Pace shares in his and his wife's names, adjusted previously placed spread bets and placed new spread bets between learning on February 27, 2002, that a possible take-over of Pace by a much larger competitor had been abandoned and that Pace, for other reasons, was very likely to issue a profit warning within the next few days, and the publication of that warning on March 5, 2002.

The tribunal heard that Mr Parker agreed that the transactions identified by the FSA had taken place, but denied relying on information which was not generally available.

It was told he had argued that the information was already in the public domain and he was carrying out a pre-conceived plan of hedging shares owned by him and his wife and share options granted to him.

He said the transactions did not show a change in his strategy.

The FSA said the £300,000 penalty was designed to recover the profit and to include an additional punitive element.

Giving his reasons for reducing the penalty imposed on Mr Parker, tribunal chairman Colin Bishopp said: "Our conclusions, which are unanimous in all respects, are that Mr Parker engaged in market abuse from February 27, 2002, to March 4, 2002, by dealing in and spread betting on Pace shares. By so doing he made an abusive profit of £121,742 and the appropriate aggregate penalty is £250,000."

The tribunal was told that Mr Parker had petitioned for bankruptcy in May this year.

In his conclusion of the hearing Mr Bishopp said: "He (Mr Parker) has co-operated only superficially with the Authority s investigation (that is, he attended interviews but he steadfastly denied any wrongdoing) and has made no attempt of any kind to put matters right."

e-mail: jonathan.walton @bradford.newsquest.co.uk