The former head of fund management at Bank of Ireland has re-emerged at a $4bn (€3.1bn) fund of hedge funds two months after leaving his previous job after a reorganisation.

Kevin Dolan, who was chief executive of Bank of Ireland's asset management services division in Dublin for two years until he left in September, will become chief executive early next year of La Fayette Investment Management UK, a London-based fund of hedge funds with $4.4bn in assets under management. He replaces Jan Pensaert, who has left La Fayette three years after joining from fund of hedge funds Permal Investment Management. The change was revealed in stock market filings made on Friday by La Fayette's funds, which said Dolan had accepted an offer to join the group. A spokeswoman for La Fayette confirmed that Pensaert had left. Dolan left Bank of Ireland after it combined its wholesale financial services and asset management services units into a capital markets division, run by former wholesale financial services chief executive Denis Donovan. The bank said Dolan would return to London to rejoin his family. He previously worked for Axa Investment managers and Rothschild. La Fayette was founded in 1992 by executive chairman Andre Visser and is one of 134 funds of hedge funds with more than $1bn in assets under management as of the end of last year, according to hedge fund industry tracker InvestHedge. The figure is considered a threshold within the industry, above which companies can attract institutional investment. The value of La Fayette's assets under management puts it near another threshold, according to investment consultant Jacob Schmidt, founder and director of the UK's Schmidt Research Partners. Funds of funds and single-manager hedge fund firms with more than $5bn are regarded as candidates for a public flotation or a trade sale.