If anyone thought Werner Seifert, the determined Swiss chief executive of Deutsche Börse, had give up on his ambition to create a pan-European stock exchange involving the London market, look no further than a revealing article published in the German press last week.

It appeared in Börsen-Zeitung, the Frankfurt financial publication, and was co-authored by Seifert and Professor Hans-Joachim Voth, an academic from King's College, Cambridge and the University of Pompe Fabra in Barcelona. One of the most intriguing things about the article is what it reveals about Seifert and his motivation.