Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom private equity veteran Allan Murray-Jones is to step down as a partner from the firm later this summer, Legal Week has learned.

Murray-Jones, who has been at Skadden since 2001, is seen as one of the City's senior private equity specialists and is the firm's relationship manager for major client Doughty Hanson.

He was previously a partner at legacy Lovells between 1986 and 2000, and took a part-time role at Doughty Hanson in early 2001 before joining Skadden.

With a focus on mergers and acquisitions, Murray-Jones has significant experience with transactions involving leverage and whole company securitisations, and is responsible for Skadden's London regulatory law practice.

In 2011, he advised Doughty on the company's £250m acquisition of oil and gas logistics company Asco.

It is unclear where Murray-Jones will go to next, or which corporate partners in the London office will take the reins for the Doughty Hanson relationship. Skadden declined to comment.

Earlier this year, high-profile Skadden's high-profile partner Bruce Buck stepped down as leader of the US firm's London office.

The Chelsea Football Club chairman, who has led the London office since 1988, remains as the firm's European head in a full-time fee-earning capacity.

His successor, former Moscow head and corporate finance partner Pranav Trivedi, now commits the majority of his time to the UK.