Staff poaching wars have broken out in the City again. As in the past, it's the interdealer brokers that are at each other's throats.

A few months ago, Tony Verrier quit Tullett Prebon as chief operating officer to join BGC. This, after a huge bust-up with boss Terry Smith.

What happened was that Verrier said he was going and revealed he was joining Swiss rival Tradition. Smith told Verrier he would have to work his notice period. Then Verrier went sick, opting to recuperate with his wife at the Four Seasons hotel in Langkawi, Malaysia, instead of at their home in Essex.

Unfortunately for Verrier, comedian Russell Brand was staying at the same establishment. When someone took Brand's picture and it came to Smith's attention, he was able to identify the couple basking with the celebrity in the tropical sunshine. Verrier was immediately suspended. He later changed his mind and dropped Tradition in favour of BGC.

Now 15 of Tullett's dealers have quit, saying they do not want to renew their contracts. The suspicion is they too are heading for BGC, and Smith fears more may be targeted.

BGC's aggressively expansionist approach seems baffling - after all, we're supposed to be in the midst of a recession and the rest of the City is laying off staff. It would, of course, be entirely unworthy to suspect that Verrier could be intent on getting his own back on Smith by poaching his old Tullett crew.

City Spy hopes Verrier's new employers have deep enough pockets to pay all the new wages involved. Don't they know there's a credit crunch on?

Feeling a chill in the Alps

The braying voices are gone. The instantly recognisable City tones that dominated the bars and restaurants of Les Trois Vallées are no more. Locals in Meribel are desolés at the effect the credit crunch is having on business.

City Spy's man in the Alpine retreat, says: “January was dead. February half-term was muted, and it is all because of the Brits, the credit crunch and the pound-Euro thing. The Germans and the Belgians are still here, but they are largely irrelevant.

“Even the Brits who do come here are eating sandwiches for lunch and staying in at night. It's a quieter, more sober place — and less lucrative.”

* Todd Stitzer has made a good fist of shaking up Cadbury, demerging the drinks business and reminding everyone that they like Dairy Milk. But please Todd, can you be less, er, American? Cadbury is now, he says, a “pure-play confectionery company” and he's “focused on operational delivery”. No Todd, no.

* How well are things settling down at Blue Oar, now the City finance house has been taken over by Evolve? Well, down appears to be the operative word, judging by the mood. The whole securities operation of about 50 people has been made subject to a 30-day consultation period, suggesting redundancies are in the offing. Morale is said to be awful and commissions are off a cliff. Matters have not been helped by the new owners' apparent lack of understanding of the business. New chairman Bernie Leaver was overheard asking the firm's economist where he got his material from for his daily client bulletin. Perhaps if Leaver attended the morning meeting he might find out. But then again, it does start at 7.40am...

Branson's Formula One hopes take a dent

Alas, Sir Richard Branson. City Spy hears that the Virgin boss will not be acquiring the Honda Formula One team which is destined to be snapped up in a management buyout. What a shame. Sir Richard won't get to wear one of the F1 winners' medals that Bernie Ecclestone is so keen to introduce.

* Domino's Pizza boss Chris Moore says he spent his “formative years” in Rio de Janeiro. “For a 17-year-old boy to be in Rio at that time, I think you can safely say I was spoilt, without going into too much detail,” he says. Chris, go on, do tell us... you know you want to.

* Labour MP George Mudie may not be too comfortable with the written transcript of the recent Parliamentary hearing at which four ex-bankers from Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS were interrogated by the Treasury select committee. It shows that when former HBOS supremos Lord Stevenson and Andy Hornby were being asked about the departure of their risk manager Paul Moore, who was replaced by Jo Dawson, Mudie managed to refer to the middle-aged Dawson as “a girl”. He did. It's there in black and white.

Economist rapped over wraps

Letter in The Economist: “Given your newspaper's determination to accompany any article on social or political affairs in eastern Europe with a photograph of the apparently ubiquitous old lady with a shawl wrapped over her head, I was delighted to find that your recent piece on the gas crisis in the region (“Gasping for gas”, 17 January) carried a picture representative of another important demographic group: the dentally challenged villager. My excitement was short-lived, however, as just a week later it was back to the well-wrapped old lady (“To the barricades”, 24 January). One gets the impression from your coverage of elections that every polling station east of the Danube is populated solely by such characters.

“To avoid creating any misleading stereotypes, may I suggest that you widen your range of imagery to better represent east Europeans. Roma using horsedrawn carts on main roads, elderly veterans in Soviet-style uniforms and furry hats and vodka-soaked vagrants would broaden the picture.”

* Virgin Media Chief executive Neil Berkett reckons the company is losing its reputation for dreadful customer service. “We are really starting to see people pay for quality and I'm talking Virgin Media here,” he brags. Really?