Thursday preview: Clinton Cards, UK Services PMI

Thursday is usually the busiest day of the week for scheduled company announcements, but tomorrow's agenda is looking a bit threadbare.

Greetings card seller Clinton Cards holds its annual general meeting at which it might reveal how its Christmas trading went. The loss-making company needed a bumper end of year sales bonanza more than ever as sales have been on a declining trend in the firm's new financial year, which started in August. The company said like-for-like sales in the 12 weeks to 23rd October fell 1.5% on the same period the year before. Sales in its Clinton branded shops dropped by 1.5%, while its Birthdays outlets fell by 1.3%.

Sounds like a good reason to have the "Sorry to hear you are not well" cards at the ready ...

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On the economic side of things, the Services Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for December is due out at 9:30am. Expectations are that the index will have dipped to 51.5 from 52.1 in November.

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Big Yellow Group, Caledonia Investments, Hogg Robinson Group, London Stock Exchange Group, Rolls-Royce Group, Sepura

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

GlaxoSmithKline

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Bloomberg Consumer Confidence (US) (14:45)

Continuing Claims (US) (13:30)

Crude Oil Inventories (US) (15:30)

Industrial new orders (00:00)

Initial Jobless Claims (US) (13:30)

ISM Non-Manufacturing (US) (15:00)

ISM Services (US) (15:00)

PMI Construction (GER) (08:55)

Producer Price Index (EU) (10:00)

AGMS

Clinton Cards

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Official Reserves (09:30)

PMI Services (09:30)

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