The Conclusions on alcohol and health adopted on 1 December by Europe’s Health Ministers miss a golden opportunity to develop a sustainable approach against tackling alcohol-related harm.

For decades Elektror has been famous for customer proximity, quality and reliability concerning the fields of centrifugal fans, axial fans and side channel blowers. The foundation of European on-site subsidiaries – as close to the customer as possible – has been an integral part of their corporate strategy for over two years.

AB-InBev did not give a figure for the year-ago profit, saying it could not compare numbers from Anheuser Busch and InBev before they combined. In the July-September 2008 period InBev made USD 690 million and Anheuser-Busch USD 666.1 million, it was reported.

Peter Lehmann Wines, once stock-market listed, and since 2003 integrated in the Swiss-based Hess Group of companies, achieved an after tax profit of AUD 5.7 million (EUR 3.6 million) on revenue of AUD 51.6 million (EUR 32.2 million) for the full year ending 30 June 2009.

In Manchester, meanwhile, council and National Health Service leaders across the ten boroughs say they need to raise the price of drinks because the region has higher than average rates of deaths and hospital admissions from alcohol consumption.

Botellones, which took off in Spain about 20 years ago, are a phenomenon like “flash mobs“ – a group of strangers who organise themselves, using electronic media such as mobile phones or the Internet, to come together in a public place at a certain time to get up to all kinds of mischief. At least that’s how the authorities see it.

Like Diageo, Pernod Ricard has been hard hit by de-stocking in the U.S. When it reported better-than-expected results for its past fiscal year at the start of September 2009, it warned that the wines and spirits industry will stagnate during its current fiscal year due to the economic downturn.

It started out so well for Punch Taverns, Britain’s leading pub company (pubco). When it was set up in 1997 as the divested Bass Brewers’ pub estate, the company witnessed a steep rise thanks to numerous expansions through acquisitions, a listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2002 and the purchase of the former competitor Pubmaster in 2003 for GBP 1.193 billion (EUR 1.3 billion).

Mr Burgard is not to be envied. He has been given the task of turning around Carlsberg’s German business (Holsten, Feldschlösschen) in order to meet profit margins.

Russia’s beer market – a tale of woe. Heineken, SABMiller, Efes, Carlsberg: even without the rise in excise, brewers are already suffering from Russia’s economic slump. But Carlsberg, which has made a hefty bet on the beer markets of eastern Europe and spent about USD 12 billion buying and investing in Baltika Breweries, could be hit hardest.