Wednesday preview: Man and Wetherspoon

Pubs group JD Wetherspoon gives an update on Wednesday for the second quarter of its financial year, which will cover the hyper-busy Christmas and New year trading period.

Panmure Gordon notes the group will be running up against some tough comparative figures from a year ago, but still reckons the group will announce "solid" like-for-like sales growth of around 1% and an operating margin in the region of 9.3%.

Hedge fund manager Man Group will have been glad to have seen the back of 2011, a year in which its share price halved. Unfortunately, the company is still obliged to look back on 2011, starting with an update on Wednesday covering the final three months of the year. RBC reckons Man will have seen an eye-watering $2.3bn outflow of funds in the final quarter of 2011.

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Switching to the economy, UK unemployment data is out. The consensus expectation is that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) unemployment rate for November will have stabilised at 8.3%, while December's claimant count unemployment is tipped to rise by 7,100. Barclays Capital said it expects earnings growth for December to be unchanged from November.

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Home Retail Group, Hyder Consulting, National Grid

INTERIM EX-DIVIDEND DATE

ACM Shipping Group, Ashtead Group, Consort Medical, Games Workshop Group, QinetiQ Group

QUARTERLY EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Caterpillar Inc.

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Capacity Utilisation (US) (16:15)

Crude Oil Inventories (US) (15:30)

Industrial Production (US) (16:15)

MBA Mortgage Applications (US) (12:00)

Producer Price Index (US) (13:30)

IMSS

Carphone Warehouse Group, Diploma, Findel

AGMS

Character Group, Diploma, Enegi Oil, Lowland Investment Co, Majedie Investments, Tracsis

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Hochschild Mining, JD Wetherspoon, Man Group, Tullow Oil

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Claimant Count Rate (09:30)

Unemployment Rate (09:30)

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Bellway

FINAL EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Artemis VCT, Cardiff Property, CareTech Holding, Imperial Tobacco Group, Income & Growth VCT , RWS Holdings

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