Multi site link exchange

Is having similar link pages on multiple sites an issue for SE's?

[stinky]

I manage multiple sites for a client and all their sites are in the same industry.
My question is, i have been doing a lot of link exchanging but the clients link pages all have the same links on them. Note, each client site has different content on there site but the link pages look exactally the same because when i find a link partner to one site i automatically ask that person to exchange with all the other sites. Will having similar link pages cause a problem in the SE's?
-Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

[cnvi]

yes. based on my ten years of experience, I've seen clients penalized for having multiple links areas (i am referring to multiple link directories or multiple exit link resource areas.)

Multiple links areas look spammy to search engines.

Best to keep all of your link partners in one well categorized directory. I have not seen any problems with one well categorized area with multiple link pages just as long as those pages are in one well categorized editor based directory.

[stinky]

cnvi the client sites all have very neat categorized link pages. There are 20 different link categories for each site.