The Week Ahead

BANKS and insurers will come under the spotlight again this week as the half-year results season continues apace.

The last of the "big five" UK banking giants report interim figures, with HSBC the first to kick off proceedings today.

A slump of between 18 and 37 per cent in interim pre-tax profits is being predicted, with forecasts ranging from $8.95bn to $11.68bn (£4.53bn to £5.91bn).

Barclays follows on Thursday with its results, which are set to show "significantly depleted earnings" at its investment banking arm, according to Citigroup analysts.

Citi is expecting Barclays' impairment losses to total £1.6bn in the first half, with predictions for pre-tax profits to have shrunk by just under a third – 32 per cent down – to £2.8bn.

On Friday, Royal Bank of Scotland is the last of the "big five" to report.

RBS insisted in April that its underlying performance had remained satisfactory and analysts are expecting underlying pre-tax profits – stripping out write-downs – of £4.9bn for the first six months of the year.

Statutory results, however, are thought to have sunk to a loss after this year's write-downs, with reports suggesting that RBS may post a loss of £1.2bn compared with a £5bn profit in the first half of 2007.

Edinburgh-based life and pensions giant Standard Life cheered the market with better-than-expected first-quarter new business figures at the end of April, but sales at the half-year stage may not be so rosy.

Worldwide sales of life and pensions saw an 8 per cent hike to £4.48bn in the first three months, but the consensus forecast in the market is for a reversal into negative territory in the half-year.

Analysts are forecasting that Standard Life will reveal on Wednesday that worldwide life and pensions sales fell 1 per cent to £8.5bn.

However, this is not expected to have held profits back, with the market predicting a 39 per cent rise in operating profits before tax, on an embedded value basis, to £489 million.

Broadcaster ITV is expected to reveal a sharp fall in half-year profits on Wednesday amid weakening prospects for advertising revenues in a slowing economy.

Power station operator Drax, which posts half-year figures tomorrow, is benefiting from a trading environment where power prices are rising even more quickly that the coal it needs to generate it.

Deutsche Bank is expecting underlying earnings down 20 per cent to £190m because the spread between its power and coal costs was even wider in the first half of 2007, before shrinking back later in the year.

Ladbrokes will give its interim figures on Thursday after what is likely to have been a mixed half for the UK's biggest bookmaker.

According to the company, analysts are expecting earnings before interest and tax of between £127m and £134m, broadly flat compared to last year.

European property group Hammerson's half-year results, which are due on Thursday, arrive amid a difficult backdrop for the commercial property sector.