IF the battle for the London Stock Exchange is the longest-running non-bid ever, then Werner Seifert, former chief executive of Deutsche Börse, must be the saga’s most constant non-participant.

Few could forget Seifert’s bad start in late 2004 when he decided to launch his LSE bid from his girlfriend’s office in London. Since she was a journalist it hardly seemed surprising that news of the bid leaked, pushing up the share price.

It was just the first in a series of blunders that led to Seifert’s ignominious ousting, but the one that made me snigger most.

However, new — albeit equally irregular — evidence has been brought to my attention that suggests my mirth may be unfairly placed. A few months ago, Seifert moved to Ireland to concentrate on his jazz playing — and also to avoid tax on his €12m (£8m) pay-off.

He left behind his other big treasure: a vast apartment in Frankfurt with views over the river.

In the meantime, another banker from a rival firm has moved in to house-sit — and discovered some peculiar additional fixtures. A complex system of listening devices is hidden in the ceilings and walls — even in the bathrooms.

The discovery has surprised Seifert as much as the banker. Now I’m told an investigation is under way to find out who put them there, what they heard — and whether they may have profited. A former colleague said: “Seifert often did business from his flat, so it would be an obvious target.” Let’s see.

EDF’s not in our boat

OOH LA LA. Despite its charm offensive in Britain, the French utility giant EDF has short-circuited its image.

News of a spectacular gaffe emerged last week at the launch of The Crossing, the book by television presenter Ben Fogle and Olympic gold-medallist James Cracknell, about their rowing race across the Atlantic in Spirit of EDF Energy, above. Fogle said he returned from his heroics only to find that EDF had cut off his electrictity.

“I found a letter from (EDF) saying I hadn’t paid a monthly bill of about £80 and they didn’t know where I was. This was despite us being all over international television with their logo on our boat. It just shows that while EDF was significant in our lives, we were not at all significant in theirs.”

Red hot poker

THERE wasn’t pain for everyone in the online gambling sector last week. Chris Gorman, who launched the online poker site Purple Lounge last year, has benefited from the shock ban in America.

“They don’t worry us,” he told me. “We don’t take US bets. We’ve had a record week — and a takeover offer, too. It’s been great.”

The trader they hate

LIFE gets worse for Brian Hunter, the disgraced trader in the Calgary office of the hedge fund Amaranth whose wrong-way bet on the energy markets snowballed into losses of $6 billion (£3.2 billion), slashing Amaranth’s assets by nearly 70%. I hear Hunter has had to hire two bodyguards after several attempted attacks — not from investors, but from colleagues.

• SUCH is the almost non-stop farce at Langbar that it’s hard to remember it is a serious fraud and not the City’s answer to reality TV.

In July embattled shareholders received their first snippet of good news: the new management under David Buchler had found and recovered more than £4m in an old Insinger bank account. The cash was used to track down more Langbar funds: Buchler planned an investor meeting for last Friday to say it was hopeful of recovering €50m (£34m).

But the meeting was cancelled after the company learnt there had been a mistake: the £4m wasn’t Langbar’s after all and now it must be repaid.

• AS the witch-hunt starts into why Airbus is so far behind schedule with the A380 superjumbo, it’s interesting to spot the clues. Here’s one: last week Airbus admitted that German and French engineers were in fact using totally different versions of design software. Then as various updates were made to the plane’s specifications they were not communicated between the two groups. Doh!