Week ahead: Late rally looks likely to boost Standard Life in difficult year

Edinburgh-based Standard Life – which recently appointed finance chief David Nish as its new chief executive – has already hailed the return of investor appetite, reporting a 38 per cent leap in UK sales to 2.88 billion over the final quarter of 2009.

This limited the decline in worldwide new business over the full year to 7 per cent, which was far better than expected in the market. It may have provided a much-needed boost to annual figures, due on Wednesday, but is not expected to be enough to have offset a difficult first half.

Analysts are pencilling in operating profits of about 662 million, down from 933m a year earlier. The challenging beginning to 2009 left new business 10 per cent lower over the full year, at 10.1bn.

However, UK pensions business soared by 42 per cent over the final quarter, with demand shooting up for its DIY-style self-invested personal pensions.

Nationalised Northern Rock is set to report another year of losses on Wednesday, but there have been encouraging signs of recovery at the lender.

NR, which completed its restructuring into "good" and "bad" banks at the turn of the year, said it had seen "significant improvement" in trading during the second half of 2009. Growth in mortgage arrears has slowed, helped by low interest rates and improved debt management.

Meanwhile, financial conditions have stabilised enough for the Treasury to be able to remove the 100 per cent guarantee on savings at the end of May.

NR has been in public ownership since February 2008 after being bailed out by the taxpayer in the early stages of the credit crunch.

Results from the bank will inevitably spark a fresh round of speculation over who will buy the "good" bank – with 19bn in retail savings and a 10bn mortgages book – when it returns to the private sector. Clydesdale owner National Australia Bank was said to be sounding out advisers over a possible bid for NR earlier this year, while Virgin Money, which almost bought the group before it was nationalised, is also a likely contender.

Morrisons, the UK's fourth biggest supermarket chain, should take the loss of chief executive Marc Bolland in its stride on Thursday with annual results expected to show strong sales and profits growth.

Consensus forecasts for the grocer put underlying pre-tax profits for the year to February at 759m, up on last year's 636m.

Morrisons outperformed the wider market for the fourth year in a row during the festive season, after revealing sales for the Christmas trading period up 6.5 per cent on a year earlier, putting its larger rivals in the shade.

This should settle the nerves of investors facing life after Bolland, who has left to join Marks & Spencer on a 15m package after masterminding the revival of the supermarket.

His successor, Dalton Philips, joins later this month. He is a relative unknown in the UK retail world but boasts an impressive CV as a former executive of US giant Wal-Mart and chief operating officer of Canadian food group Loblaw.

JD Wetherspoon is expected to post resilient half-year numbers on Friday despite the chilling effects of the winter's snow on sales figures. January's big freeze prevented some drinkers from getting to the firm's pubs, causing footfall to drop. But the pubs firm said it is confident in its full-year prospects, with analysts expecting the firm to smash its record 66.2m underlying pre-tax profits last year, by reporting a 72m surplus.

A bumper run of silver screen blockbusters like 3D sensation Avatar are expected to have helped Cineworld to a strong year when it announces 12-month results on Thursday.

The cinema operator has said ticket takings rose 16.8 per cent in 2009. Analysts at Cazenove expect the firm to post profits of 30m for the 52 weeks.

Cineworld is confident for 2010 with a film line-up that includes the first part of JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Shrek 4 and Sex And The City 2.