Wednesday preview: Italian government, Workspace in focus

All eyes on Wednesday will continue to be on markets' biggest bugbears of late, populist parties in Rome and the ongoing global trade tensions

Closer to home, the emphasis will be on the ongoing Brexit talks with Brussels, although the key dates to watch for, the 12 June Commons vote on the EU Withdrawal bill and the 28-29 June EU leaders' summit, were still relatively 'far off', at least as far traders are concerned.

Against that backdrop, perhaps the key economic event on the economic calendar will be a speech by European Central Bank chief economist, Peter Praet at 0800 BST, followed by the always contentious US foreign trade numbers for April which are set to be published at 1330 BST.

In the corporate space meantime, Workspace, the commercial property-focused REIT, is among those companies due to update investors on Wednesday.

Analysts forecast the company would post full-year adjusted earnings per share of 35.8p, up from 30.6p for the same period one year ago.

Nevertheless, as analysts at Numis pointed out, some in the markets were concerned that investors might have gone too far too fast in rewarding the company's success in exploiting what they termed as the "structurally growing subsector" of flexible workspace.

Indeed, that had driven a sharp 28% run-up in the stock over the past year.

Analyst Paul Gorrie also highlighted the 'noise' in the background created by rival WeWork's recent $700m bond offering.

"Any wobble from WeWork could send ripples through the wider industry, and WeWork's aggressive growth continues to worry some that the nascent flexible office market is set to be flooded with space," he mused.

Yet for the moment at least, Gorrie did not believe that was a cause for concern, pointing to the differences between the two companies' business models, even if there was some 'overlap' both in terms of their offering and tenant base.

Wednesday June 06

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Factory Orders (GER) (07:00)

Gross Domestic Product (EU) (10:00)

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Halifax House Price Index (08:30)

FINALS

Alpha Financial Markets Consulting, Findel, RPC Group, Tricorn Group, Workspace Group

TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

WH Smith

GMS

BATM Advanced Communications Ltd., Carpetright

AGMS

Advanced Medical Solutions Group, Albion Technology & General VCT, Applegreen, Aurora Investment Trust, Bisichi Mining, F&C Commercial Property Trust Ltd., Flowtech Fluidpower, GCP Asset Backed Income Fund Limited, GVC Holdings, Hurricane Energy, M&C Saatchi, Plant Health Care, Sagicor Financial Corporation Limited (DI), Seplat Petroleum Development Company (DI), Share plc

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

BBGI SICAV S.A. (DI), BlackRock Latin American Inv Trust, Intertek Group, Konami Holdings Corporation

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

James Halstead

INTERIM EX-DIVIDEND DATE

Barloworld Ltd.

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

Unilever