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MARKET COMMENT
By
Carburton Street, London -- The bank-reporting season carries on apace with no less than five banks scheduled to deliver numbers next week. There are also figures from the drinks and telecom sectors. Standard Chartered (LSE: STAN), the 150-year-old financial institution that specialises in providing banking facilities to developing countries, is forecast to post full year profits between £1.3b and £1.4b. This is slightly lower than the £1.44b that the bank reported last year. The performance at Standard Chartered, which conducts most of its business in Asia and Africa, is expected to reflect the ongoing difficulties in these two regions. As such, the bad debt provisions will come under close scrutiny. The bank has also been flagged as a possible takeover target for some of the more aggressive European and US banks that might be eying up a presence in the Far East. Standard Chartered reports on Wednesday. The ousting of three directors at Abbey National (LSE: ANL) earlier this month is likely to bring added interest to the bank's results next week. Abbey said the departures were the result of management restructuring but speculation continues to centre on possible differences over the bank's strategy going forward. Abbey National, which is a major player in the mortgage lending market, is keen to develop its presence in the small to medium sized business market. It recently launched a new business bank account that offered a 3% interest on credit balances and free banking forever to lure customers away from the UK's "Big Four" clearing banks. Abbey National has full year numbers on Thursday. Allied Irish Banks (LSE: ALBK) has attracted market attention recently for all the wrong reasons. The Dublin-based bank admitted last week that it had uncovered fraudulent activities at its US subsidiary Allfirst. The amount involved, just over half a billion pounds, is expected to impact the banks profit by €596m after tax. The events at AIB has weakened the bank as a result of its depressed share price, and make it that much more vulnerable to a possible predatory takeover. Allied Irish has finals on Wednesday. There are also results due from a brace of mortgage specialists, namely Bradford & Bingley (LSE: BB.) and Alliance & Leicester (LSE: AL.).Bradford & Bingley steps forward on Wednesday and Alliance & Leicester follows later on in the week on Friday.
Diageo (LSE: DGE) will have half time numbers for the market on Thursday. The drinks maker, today, re-issued some key interim numbers for last year under its so-called "Major, Key and Venture" markets classifications. Hopefully the reclassification will make comparisons a little easier. Diageo has grown significantly through acquisitions and just recently received approval for its Seagram spirits purchase. But this acquisition was on condition that its sells its Malibu brand. SMS (Short Messaging Service) systems have been the main driver for Logica (LSE: LOG) in the last couple of years. But the telecom software specialist has been slow in pushing out its MMS or Multimedia Messaging Service, which is expected to be the next "big thing" in mobile telephony. The company has been losing ground steadily to CMG (LSE: CMG), which has secured deals with Hutchison 3G and Telenor. Logica has also lost ground to Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY). In fact the Swedish telecom giant beat both companies to secure a deal with Vodafone Group (LSE: VOD) to be its global supplier of MMS software. Logica shareholders will be keen to hear how the company plans to redress this problem when it delivers numbers on Wednesday.
There are also results during the week from alternative telecom operator Colt Telecom (LSE: CTM), pub chain SFI Group (LSE: SUF), coach builder Mayflower (LSE: MFW), oil and gas explorer BG Group (LSE: BG.), biotechnology company Xenova (LSE: XEN) and building materials supplier Hanson (LSE: HNS).