Monday 14 October
-Ashmore Q1 AUM update
-EU industrial production data
-US Federal Budget balance data
Tuesday 15 October
-Schroders Q3 update
-UK unemployment and wage figures
-US tariffs on $250 worth of Chinese goods due to be hiked from 25% to 30% unless American and Chinese officials can negotiate a mini trade deal over the weekend
-Chinese inflation figures
-Quintet of US financials – JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs report
Wednesday 16 October
-UK and EU inflation data
-Builder Barratt Developments, mining company BHP and AIM-listed darling Asos report
-Across the pond Bank of America, IBM and BNY Mellon report
Thursday 17 October
-Unilever results
AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould notes the Anglo Dutch consumer goods giant has coped well with the transition from Paul Polman to Alan Jope as chief executive, which took place on 1 January this year.
“After a mildly disappointing set of full-year results, Unilever has so far produced a solid first-quarter update and first-half set of figures which show the firm is on track to meet the targets laid down by Polman in the wake of Kraft Heinz’s failed bid for the company in 2017,” he said.
Jope reaffirmed Unilever’s medium-term targets of sales growth of 3% to 5% a year. While its emerging market business has surpassed this rate, growing 6.7% year-on-year in H1 19, the firm has been struggling to boost sales in developed markets, which slid by 0.7% during the period.
“Note that Unilever has restated its definition of underlying sales growth as of this coming third quarter (and therefore restated the historic numbers for underlying volume and price growth back to Q1 2016) thanks to the hyperinflationary conditions in Venezuela and especially Argentina,” he says. “There is no impact on revenues or any other part of the profit and loss account but it will be interesting to see if the problems in Argentina do weight on Unilever’s overall performance in emerging markets.”
-WH Smith full year results
-Results from Domino’s Pizza and National Express
-FCA complaints data H1 19
The UK’s largest wealth manager St James’s Place saw 898 complaints made against its pension and investment products in the second half of last year, lower than the 924 customer complaints in H1 18 but the percentage of complaints upheld remained unchanged at 87%.
Friday 18 October
-London Stock Exchange reports
LSE narrowly avoided being taken over by rivals Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing in a deal worth £32bn, thus clearing the way for it to acquire Reuters-owned Refinitiv.
Major LSE shareholder Nick Train welcomed a potential £21.9bn match-up with Refinitiv which he said would create the world’s largest listed financial markets infrastructure company and a credible rival to Michael Bloomberg’s financial news and data empire.
