Knight Frank partners pick up £600,000 bonuses each

Partners at Knight Frank have helped themselves to bonuses of an average of £600,000 each after posting strong results for their last financial year.

Last year, each partner received an average bonus of £169,000.

Pre-tax profits at the firm climbed to £54.8m in the last financial year to March 2010 – a rise of 168%.

The profit level was only just short of the £59.2m made at the height of the boom in 2007. The firm, which has 209 offices in 43 countries, also experienced a 13% rise in turnover, to £288m. It credited its results as being driven by the performance of  UK residential sales.

Nick Thomlinson, senior partner at Knight Frank, said that the bonuses reflected “the big tunaround” in the business, which also handles commercial sales and lettings as well as residential.

In total, staff bonuses and commissions for the financial year 2009/2010 were £35.5m, more than double the payout for the year before.

News of the bonanza will come as little comfort to the 10% of Knight Frank staff who lost their jobs in the recession, as the firm made severe cost costs.

Thomlinson warned that there would not be a return to the heady conditions of pre-credit crunch Britain “for a long, long time”.

But he added: “We are back to what I would call a normal market.”