Shares in Lloyds Banking Group were down on the FTSE 100 in afternoon trading ahead of the group's full year results, expected tomorrow.

In its third quarter update in November the part-nationalised bank reported a positive if unexciting set of results.

However in December ominous signs started to appear as sharper than expected spending cuts announced in Ireland led the bank to raise its bad debt provisions to £4.3 billion.

Despite this and difficult conditions in its Australian operations, the bank is expected to announce an improved performance from 2009.

Keith Bowman, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said, "On a consensus forecast basis, revenues are expected to rise marginally (1.6 per cent) to £24.34 billion, whilst pre-tax profit, a figure which last year included a goodwill gain from the acquisition of HBOS, is forecast to rise by around 84 per cent to £1.91 billion."

By 15:15 shares in Lloyds Banking Group were down 0.47 per cent to 65.19 pence per share.

FTSE