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Xavier Rolet is stepping down as chief executive officer of billionaire Michael Hintze’s hedge fund firm, just a year after taking the role.

Rolet, former CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group Plc, joined London-based CQS in January last year to free Hintze to focus on investing. The abrupt departure comes as the firm is growing its assets under management and is hiring more staff.

Rolet is leaving for “reasons unconnected with CQS,” according to an emailed statement from the hedge fund. He will become a full-time strategic adviser to the firm and Serge Harry has been appointed deputy-CEO.

As one of the largest credit-focused hedge fund firms in Europe, Hintze’s firm has built up assets to a record $19.8 billion from $14.6 billion two years ago. CQS is expanding its asset management arm, including a recently launched fund focused on North American equities, and hired Paul Graham, former chief executive officer of AlphaGen Capital, as its new head of equities.

Hintze and Rolet have known each other for more than three decades and sat next to each other when they worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. earlier in their careers. Rolet, who joined the LSE in 2009, left the stock exchange in 2017 after a public spat between the board and activist investor Chris Hohn. In his tenure at LSE, he led a series of successful deals that gave the stock exchange control of the world’s largest clearinghouse and made them one of the biggest compilers of financial indexes.

--With assistance from Suzy Waite and Viren Vaghela.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nishant Kumar in London at nkumar173@bloomberg.net;Katie Linsell in London at klinsell@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shelley Robinson at ssmith118@bloomberg.net, Chris Bourke

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