If not, then Unigate should indulge in a shareholder-friendly special dividend.The group has benefited from favourable commodity prices and bedding down acquisitions. But BSE has taken its toll on the shares.Northern Foods, tomorrow, will also display a spectacular advance – from pounds 27.9m to pounds 125m Last year’s figures were devastated by provisions. A further pounds 42m came in last week from the disposal of part of its US restaurant operations.With such riches, acquisitions must be on the cards. There is also the complication of the sale of its shares in National Grid.Profit forecasts, therefore, are spread wide. Greig Middleton is top of the range, shooting for pounds 210.9m; NatWest Securities is on pounds 202.2m and UBS brings up the rear with pounds 172.1m. Last year’s figure was pounds 214m.Two dairy groups are in the reporting parade.

Both are suffering from the decline in the support the average family now offers its daily milkman and from the BSE disaster.Yet Unigate, today, is expected to more than double profits to pounds 121.5m and if the proceeds of the sale of its third share of Nutricia, the Dutch baby food maker, are taken into account the figure will be around pounds 341.5m.After the Nutricia sale, Unigate’s cash hoard should be pounds 150m. East Midlands is the first of the electricity groups to report year’s profits after the first of Professor Stephen Littlechild’s regulatory reviews and it will be intriguing to see how it has been influenced. Many are forecasting a relatively short independence for the music division. Predators, goes the conventional wisdom, are just waiting to descend on the sexy music company, with Disney among the front runners.Until the much-stronger-than-expected US payroll figures sent shares spinning on Friday, last week had been quiet and uneventful for the market. But the prospect of higher US interest rates so soon after the latest Kenneth Clarke cut had Footsie in ragged retreat. It will take a great deal of home-produced excitement – and there is a raft of Whitehall statistics which could offer encouragement – to overcome the US stunner and help shares to meet the more bullish predictions which circulate.Utilities again feature loudly in the week’s results.

Estimates of the group’s value stretch from pounds 19 to pounds 23 per share. But a takeover bid could dramatically change the calculations. A few days later the demerger will start in earnest with an investment presentation for the music side.The break-up should be final in August with share dealings in the two companies, if all goes according to plan, starting on the 19th. Tomorrow Sir Colin Southgate, chairman, will produce the final, final figures of the rental to showbiz group – showing a heady pounds 100m or so jump to, say, pounds 525m.But that should be only the start of the music. Sir Colin, who announced in February that Thorn intended to join the demerger fashion by dividing into two standalone companies, will also provide details of the splits. It should be able to give an indication of whether Exclusive sales are near, if not details of disposalsInterim profits, with a first-time Forte contribution, could approach pounds 200m with the Forte hotels chipping in pounds 30m.Granada’s shares have had a strong run, outstripping the market and prompting some to ponder the surely remote possibility that it could be contemplating another major swoop – there is even talk of a Pearson bid.Thorn EMI will also star this week – for the last time. In the heat of battle Mr Robinson promised to unload both chains.He also said Forte’s Savoy Hotel and Alpha Airports stakes would go.