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Vodaphone: said that in the quarter a higher than expected 3 million registered proportionate customers were added in the quarter, including over 0.5 million from stake changes. The total proportionate base has increased to 122.7 million, up over 18% on June last year.  (2.4 million expected)

Bondholders in Telewest Communications have penned an agreement for a debt-to-equity swap that will wipe 3.5 billion pound in debt off the cable group's balance sheet, according to the Financial Times

Pearson which typically makes much of its profit in the second half of the year, said sales dropped to 1.665 billion pounds from 1.813 billion pounds a year ago. They cited delayed textbook sales and lower advertising at the Financial Times

United Utilities says it will seek to raise up to one billion pounds through a rights issue. as it is weighed down by a maintenance and service upgrade programme

BAA said that at the pretax level, profit was down, year on year, by 11.2% to 127 million impacted by the expected effects of the FRS17 accounting standard on pension costs. CEO said: "Despite the modest traffic growth during the first three months of the current year, the Company expects overall passenger traffic to grow by approximately 4% during the year. "The dry summer weather has enabled us to press ahead with Terminal 5, our largest capital project. Both bores of the tunnel connecting the site with the existing central terminal area were completed in June, and we have now started work on the main above ground structures. We continue to be slightly ahead of our program and costs remain on budget.

Aggregate Industries "broadly in line" with expectations, with dividend increase only surprise in typically optimistic sounding statement,

Calendar All GMT	United Kingdom (F)inals (I)nterim	United States (Click Flag)	Europe & World
Mon 28th July Reports / Data	BG Group (Q2) PBT 549m exp., Exel (I)PBT 100m exp. Pearson (I) PTL 9m exp, Vodafone Q1, Aggregate Industries (I), Alizyme (I), BAA (Q1), Datamonitor (I), Domino's Pizza (I), Filtronic (F), Isis Asset Management (I), Jardine Lloyd Thompson (I), Monsoon (F), Royalblue Group (I)	Nothrop Gruman (Q2), Xerox (Q2)	EADS (I), Olivetti (Q2) 09.00 May M3 3m ma 8.5% exp. Europe: 09.00 July German IFO Expectations 100.0 exp.
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Sunday News 27th July         

Abbey National will this week disclose a massive drop in half-time profits after taking a near 600m hit for sour corporate loans.

Lloyds TSB is considering cutting its interim dividend by up to a third due to the need to pump cash into its troubled Scottish Widows life and pensions business.

The UK economy put in a sluggish performance in the second quarter of the year, casting fresh doubt over the Chancellor's growth forecasts.

Debenhams, is on the brink of recommending a 1.54m bid from the venture capital group Permira

Sunday Times:

ABBEY NATIONAL will this week struggle to convince investors that it is on the road to recovery as it unveils heavy losses in its personal financial-services division, as well as its embattled wholesale bank

ROLLS-ROYCE,has asked its staff to delay retirement by five years and accept a reduction in benefits as part of plan to plug a 1.2 billion pension-fund deficit

US Home Depot is a natural suitor for the owner of Britains B&Q

Sunday Telegraph

BAE Systems is threatening to sack 470 highly skilled employees in Brough, close to the constituency of the deputy prime minister, having rejected an offer from the Government to buy a scaled-down version of its Hawk trainer jets.

Debenhams is paying 1 million a week to CVC and Texas Pacific Group to persuade them to continue working on a possible joint bid for the department store group

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