Tuesday preview: UK retail sales, St.James's Place in the spotlight

Investor focus on Tuesday will be on the global consumer as the Confederation of British Industry releases its Distributive Trades survey for July.

Stateside meanwhile, the Conference Board will release its consumer confidence index for July.

Surveys of consumer sentiment in France and Sweden will be published on the Continent.

No major data releases are scheduled for during Asian trading hours.

For St.James's Place's half year numbers, UBS analyst Colm Kelly expects investors' focus to be on the asset manager's underlying cash result, any changes to the outlook for asset flows for the back half of 2020 and further out.

Kelly also believed management would be well-advised to update on its dividend policy "given its importance to shareholders and given peers have not sought to change dividend policy through 1H20."

Nevertheless, the firm had already indicated that no interim payout would be forthcoming.

The analyst estimated that gross inflows would decline 15% year-on-year to reach £3.2bn with new inflows down 10% to £2.0bn, for second quarter assets under management 5% ahead of the year earlier period at £114.4bn.

The underlying cash result for the latest six-month period was therefore pegged at £122m or flat on the year, but with IFRS after tax profit seen at £77m or 69% higher.

Tuesday 28 July

FINALS

Games Workshop Group, IG Design Group

INTERIMS

Quartix Holdings, Greggs, Elementis, Fresnillo, MoneySupermarket.com Group, Reckitt Benckiser, St James's Place, Tyman,

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Sanne Group

Q1

MITIE

Q3

Virgin Money UK

AGMs

Mitie Group, Byblos Bank SAL GDR (Reg S), Vodafone Group, Codemasters Group Holdings, BlackRock Smaller Companies Trust, Polar Capital Holdings, ULS TECHNOLOGY, Strategic Minerals, 1Spatial, Syncona Limited NPV, Wizz Air Holdings, Irish Continental Group Units

ANNUAL REPORT

Games Workshop Group

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Great Portland Estates, Trans-Siberian Gold, Fidelity China Special Situations, Coca-Cola HBC AG (CDI)

SPECIAL EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Alternative Liquidity Fund Limited

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

Law Debenture Corp.

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

CBI Distributive Trades Surveys (11:00)

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Consumer Confidence (US) (15:00)