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Tom Hicks, co-founder of Hicks Muse Tate & Furst, to retire next year

Tom Hicks, the co-founder and chairman of US buy-out firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, is planning to retire next year. Upon Hick's retirement, partner and co-founder John Muse will take over as chairman of the firm and will be joined on the board by European partner Lyndon Lea.

In a letter to investors, Hicks explained that he was leaving the company to spend more time with his family and their investments in property and sport.

'As I approach my sixtieth birthday in early 2006 I have found it, frankly, increasingly difficult to find enough time to be with my family; to pursue with them our shared interest in our significant family investments in the Texas Rangers baseball team, the Dallas Stars hockey team, and our growing sports venue and residential real estate development arm…and to help my older children get established professionally as investors and owners in their own right,' Hicks wrote.

He also took the opportunity to celebrate past achievements and the firm's creeping recovery from setbacks during the technology and telecoms bubble. 'I am also personally proud of how far we have come over the past few years. As we head into the fourth year of back-to-basics, we remain "on course, all systems go", with a proven and successful investment strategy, the best team we've ever had, outstanding due diligence, two major exits over the past 12 months, strong deal flow, rigorous investment discipline, and - I strongly believe - a bright future,' he wrote.

The firm is in the process of raising an E1bn European buy-out fund.

Fellow founder Charles Tate retired from the firm in 2002.

Hick's pending retirement is a reminder that a generation of private equity pioneers is coming of age and the announcement may reawaken disquiet among limited partners concerning the handover of control, in such firms, to more junior partners.

A number of private equity houses whose identity remains tightly linked to their founders such as Blackstone and Texas Pacific Group are increasingly facing questions over their succession plans.

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