Partners at Knight Frank have pocketed £46 million in bonuses this year after the group posted a 17% increase in turnover to year end April 30, 2008.

Knight Frank partners received an average of £780,000 each based on ‘robust’ performance for the year ended 30 April, 2008. The group reported turnover up 17% £333.9m but profits were down 7% to £59.2m. Last year, bonuses of over £1m were paid out to partners.

The figures reflect only the beginning of the fall in values that have since ravaged the UK property markets.

Nevertheless, Nick Thomlinson, senior partner and chairman of the Knight Frank Group, said he remained cautiously optimistic about the current year’s trading.

‘We are now seven months into our new financial year and the world is a different place,’ he says.

‘However, in the first half of the new financial year we have traded profitably.’