Quit now! Call for LSE chairman to go

A TOP City investor has called for the chairman of the London Stock Exchange to quit – accusing him of forcing out chief executive Xavier Rolet.

Sir Chris Hohn, head of The Children’s Investment Fund, has demanded that chairman Donald Brydon resigns.

He has also called for an extraordinary shareholder meeting to try to persuade Rolet to stay on, after he recently announced plans to leave next year.

Hohn’s £13bn hedge fund owns a 5pc stake in LSE. In a letter to fellow investors, he says he had a meeting with Brydon this week to ‘understand the basis for your decision to remove him as chief executive’. He adds: ‘We received no satisfactory answer. We seek your resignation.’

The investor said that as Rolet is only 57 he could easily serve another five years.

The Frenchman is popular with shareholders and has increased LSE’s value from £800m to nearly £14bn during his eight years at the helm. However, he has been criticised for trying to sell the 216-year-old company to German rival Deutsche Boerse.