The London stock exchange, after a tumultuous five days, is set to be dominated by a wave of corporate results, including heavyweights Shell and British Airways. The FTSE 100 index ended the week on Friday with a relatively modest decline of 0.55 percent at 5,869 points compared with its close a week earlier.
The index had plunged 5.48 percent on Monday, its sharpest fall since the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, on mounting fears of a US recession. Share prices continued to weaken on Tuesday and Wednesday before bouncing back on Thursday, only to slip back on Friday.
In the week ahead market watchers will concentrate on oil giant Shell, which is set to announce fourth quarter results on Thursday, with net earnings expected to show a gain in response to strong crude prices.
British Airways, presenting its third quarter results on Friday, is also likely to cheer investors, notably when the performance is compared with third quarter 2006 when planes were grounded at London-Heathrow Airport for three days just before Christmas because of fog.
Other big names reporting next week are insurer Prudential, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and mobile phone group Vodafone.
Investors are likely to continue to be preoccupied by the state of global finance and will be waiting to see if the US Federal Reserve at its meeting January 29-30 decides to ease US monetary policy further.
The Fed shocked markets last Tuesday with a 0.75-point emergency cut in US interest rates, aimed at reassuring panicky investors, and is seen as shaving another half a point in its benchmark rate, bringing it down to 3.0 percent.
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