Last week, deals worth more than £23 billion were either announced or talks were admitted. If the takeovers are successful, advisory banks will earn an estimated £230 million in fees.

A number of City banks reach the end of their financial year this month and next. Traders, fund managers, analysts and corporate financiers will find out soon how much they will be paid as a bonus on top of their salaries.

The last bumper year was 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom and a year in which Vodafone took over Mannesmann in a £101 billion deal that was the biggest hostile takeover at the time.

The top earners then were advisers to mergers and acquisitions. Among them was Scott Mead, of Goldman Sachs, who advised on the Mannesmann deal. Mr Mead was the same banker who did not notice that his secretary had stolen £3 million from his bank account.

Since the collapse of the dot-com market, City workers have had to share a more modest bonus pot.

This year, companies have said that the top bonus-earners would be those working in structured finance. One financier said: “It is the year for the anoraks.” Bankers in structured finance have arranged billions of pounds of financing — for example, providing cash for the £18 billion takeover of O2, the mobile operator, in one of the biggest deals this year.

The first banks to set bonuses will be Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street companies. A banker at a rival bank said: “All eyes will be on the levels they set. Nearly everyone will be looking at a higher bonus than last year. And the view is that bonuses will be close to the levels reached in 2000. A handful of people could be looking at bonuses that are 30 per cent higher than last year, but the majority will be in the 10 to 20 per cent range.”

Armstrong International, the recruitment company, said that the market had been buoyant in some areas. It said that some traders who individually had made $100 million (£58 million) pre-tax profit for their companies could receive bonuses of about $10 million. Others could take home bonuses of between $1 million and $3 million. Top managing directors in the leading investment banks are thought to be on course to receive about $10 million in bonuses.

One factor that will mark the total level of a bonus will be a decision by the banker, if he or she works at a US bank, to take out an option on the movement of the dollar. Bonuses at American banks are paid in dollars and bankers have the option to fix the exchange a year ahead of their bonus payment.

One banker said: “Never have the foreign exchange guys been so popular.”

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