Next week sees the start of the UK fourth-quarter reporting season proper, with the big banks kicking off proceedings as usual.

First up is Barclays (BARC), which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently with its online payments system seeming to have failed miserably around the end of the tax year just as its chief executive is reckoned to be in line for a whopping salary increase.

The bank insisted the IT glitch which stopped customers accessing their bank accounts was a ‘technical issue’ rather than a cyber attack, although the fact the same thing happened to Lloyds (LLOY) and Halifax customers a day later suggests there was some kind of malicious activity targeted at the big banks.

Meanwhile, there were media reports boss CS Venkatakrishnan could see his total pay rise more than 45% from £9.8 million to £14.3 million, if major shareholders agree, by reducing his basic salary to a still-weighty £1.59 million and allowing him to receive up to eight times that amount in bonuses if the bank hits its new ROTE (return on tangible equity) target.

None of which should detract from the fact Barclays has been one of the best-performing stocks of the past year, having doubled its market cap. Barclays is expected to show a strong uplift in profitability for the fourth quarter thanks to high levels of equity and debt trading in its investment bank and higher net interest income from mortgage lending on the retail side.

Shore Capital’s Gary Greenwood see full-year pre-tax profit rising 23% from £6.56 billion to £8.07 billion and EPS (earnings per share) growing 31% from 27.7p to 36.4p while the dividend is set to rise from 8p to 8.6p per share.

UK UPDATES OVER THE NEXT 7 DAYS

FULL-YEAR RESULTS

11 Feb: BP, Wynnstay 

12 Feb: Smurfit Westrock, TBC Bank 

13 Feb: Barclays, British American Tobacco, Relx, Unilever

FIRST-HALF RESULTS

11 Feb: Dunelm, MJ Gleeson

12 Feb: Barratt Redrow 

13 Feb: Renishaw

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

11 Feb: Babcock International Group, Bellway

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