Hard to fathom the Candy Brothers.

Nobody, it seems, is too big for a fight as far as the dynamic duo, Nick and Christian is concerned.

They're pursuing Qatari Diar, the sovereign wealth fund, for £100 million as a result of falling out over the Chelsea Barracks project.

Now, they're being sued by Carlos Slim, the world's third-richest man, for more than £13.3 million from the development of an eight-acre site in Beverly Hills.

The consensus in the industry is that they must have taken leave of their senses — you don't pick targets this big, not if you want to enter into future partnerships.

The other way of looking at it, though, which City Spy suspects is nearer to the truth, is that the Candys are deliberately putting down a marker, effectively telling the property world that nobody is too large for them to scrap with, and that you cross them at your peril.

* HMRC has issued a press release headed “Student Christmas workers could get a tax gift.” Er, what is this “gift” exactly? Only that if they earn under £6475 in the tax year to 5 April, 2010 they will not be liable to income tax. There you have it: HMRC's definition of a “gift” — to not tax someone because they did not earn enough to pay tax. Most generous.

Rough justice for Kozlowski?

Dennis Kozlowski watches every Yankees game he can. Which, considering he is part-owner of the famous baseball team, is not surprising.

But the ex-CEO of Tyco doesn't get to the games: he's an inmate in the Mid-State Correctional Facility in New York state, eight years into a
25-year stretch.

Kozlowski was convicted of filching hundreds of millions of dollars from his company. Famously, the evidence against him included a $6000 (£3664.63) shower curtain.

Kozlowski tells Fortune: “I was piggy. I had bad judgment. But I don't need to be here.”

City Spy thinks he has a point. How many other company chiefs have behaved just as badly and extravagantly as Kozlowski and not suffered one bit?

* MORE US fraud. The hit UK theatre show, Enron, is set for Broadway. A group of New York producers has paid $3.6 million to take the London drama to the Big Apple. Meanwhile, Columbia has bought the film rights. Lucy Prebble, 28, Enron's playwright, has ruled out a follow-up, however, despite the fall of Lehman being waved in her direction. “After a year of research [for Enron], I never want to read an economics book again,” she vowed.

All you City gents can push off… this is Warburg

News from the world of books: telly historian Niall Ferguson's next tome will be a biography of one of the most influential City characters of the last century — High Financier: The Lives and Time [sic] of Siegmund Warburg.

Some called Warburg, who died in 1982, a “financial Rasputin”. “I felt that I brought something to England which was a little bit different because I was a damn foreigner,” said Warburg, a German Jewish refugee who cocked a snook at the City's gentlemanly capitalism after the Second World War with his aggressive approach to mergers. Ferguson's book, published next July, will be based on 10,000 hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries.

* Trouble lingers for former Lehman Brothers boss Dick Fuld. Over the past year, he's dumped much of his art collection, sold off his Park Avenue apartment, and reneged on his memberships at the US's best and most expensive country clubs. But now the Fulds are said to be behind on their taxes — and it's quite a chunky bill, at $220,000.

* So Roman has had a baby boy, Aaron Alexander Abramovich. Hats off, obviously, to him and weary girlfriend Daria Zhukova. But what of those helpful shamans in the remote Arctic region of Chukotka, where Roman was governor, who were, City Spy revealed in October, conducting a series of arcane rituals to ensure the child's well-being? Well, naturally, well done indeed in ensuring the little blighter was born in a Los Angeles Hospital without the presence of tunygaki, “small silly spirits that can obsess a baby”. But rather less well done on a number of other counts: Baby Aaron wasn't called Kergyn, as the shamans predicted; nor was he born on a Sunday, it was last Thursday.

* Evidence of the chasm between the wealthy and poor in the UK from the retail sector? Last week, Debenhams issued the shock announcement that pushy parents were spending up to £150 on their child's nativity play costume. Said spokesman Ed Watson: “The amount of money that some parents want to spend on their child's nativity play appearance would enable the baby Jesus to leave the stable and check into a five-star hotel.” Days later, Asda reports that tea-towel sales are up 30%, since they were “a clear leader in parents' choice of head-dress” for nativity plays. One easy conclusion: both stores are desperate for publicity.