King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) has not yet paid its UK partners their August quarterly profit distribution, Legal Week has learned.

The firm is currently at least two months late with the payment, which was due to be made around July/August. The payment is believed to be the first profit distribution relating to the 2014-15 financial year.

One ex-KWM partner said: "No start has been made on the distributions due from the last financial year – ordinarily there should have been one at the end of July or early August but there hasn't been. They ought to be about to pay the second of those quarterly payments, but they haven't started."

Another ex-partner said: "The thing about KWM is that the capital you put in as a partner is very small and this has always caused the delay in paying distributions. Sometimes they have to use profits to contribute to capital."

The delay affects the legacy SJ Berwin UK arm of the business only as KWM operates a Swiss verein structure with distinct profit pools across its business.

Legacy SJ Berwin has previously held back quarterly profit distributions on a number of occasions. In February 2013 it opted to postpone paying partners their most recent profit distribution on the back of a large January tax bill that year and increased investment internationally. It paid the distribution in April 2013.

It also held back quarterly profit distributions from partners in 2009. The firm chose to keep the additional capital as a response to low billings due to the recession.

News of the delay comes as KWM's UK arm has been hit by a raft of partner departures over the last 12 months.

Earlier this month Mishcon de Reya recruited KWM's IT director Simon Kosminsky as its chief information officer and Ashurst hired corporate partner Joshua Cole. In September tax partner Giles Bavister left the firm for K&L Gates in London.

In July intellectual property partner Ray Black and regulatory partner Gregg Beechey left the firm's City office for Mishcon de Reya and Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson respectively.

In April the firm's corporate co-head Richard Lever left to join Goodwin Procter and spearhead the growth of that firm's private equity practice, while in September 2014 former corporate chief and private equity partner, Steven Davis, left to join Proskauer Rose.

KWM undertook a partnership review across its European and Middle-East operations earlier this year, which is expected to result in over 15 equity partners leaving the firm.

KWM declined to comment.