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Average pay for the top partners at a London law firm has smashed the £1.5 million mark for the first time after a bumper year advising on lucrative City deals.

The 440 highest-earning “equity partners” at “Magic Circle” firm Linklaters — based at Silk Street near the Barbican — will share profits equivalent to £1.568 million each, up eight per cent on last year’s £1.455 million.

It is the first time that £1.5 million has been breached in London and confirms Linklaters’ status as one of the world’s most successful solicitors.

Its lawyers worked on many of last year’s biggest takeover deals across the globe, suggesting that London will hold on to its status as the legal capital of the world after Brexit.

They included advising on the £80 billion merger of the world’s two largest brewers, InBev and SAB Miller, as well as the £900 million sale of The Body Shop by L’Oréal and the £1.4 billion sale of Weetabix.

It also acted for consumer goods giant Unilever when it received a takeover approach from rival Kraft.

​Linklaters is known as one of the highest-paying employers in the City as banks have been forced to rein in their once huge cash bonus payments.

It pays its newly qualified lawyers — typically aged about 23 — an average of £78,500 with high- flying “future stars” getting up to £90,000. Almost a third of its trainees were recruited from Oxbridge last year.

Global turnover from its network of 29 offices in 20 countries increased by almost 10 per cent, or 1.7 per cent stripping out the impact of currency movements, to £1.43 billion.

Gideon Moore, Linklaters’ managing partner, told The Lawyer magazine: “If at the beginning of the year offered me a 1.7 per cent increase in a year in which Brexit happened and Donald Trump was elected as US President, I would be very happy.”