Financial services firms carrying out mass job cuts could be at risk of falling foul of age discrimination laws by targeting the best paid and most experienced workers for redundancy, a prominent City law firm has warned.

Ivor Adair, an assistant solicitor at employment law specialist Russell Jones & Walker, said that an employer cutting jobs en masse could unwittingly be ageist by assuming that those with the largest pensions or the longest length of service would not "create a fuss".