Latest news with #alcohol
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Even the Guinness craze could not save the boss of Britain's booze empire
In a sign of the poorer performance, she earned just over £3m in her first year leading the company – roughly £7m lower than the £10.6m total remuneration paid to Menezes the prior year. The group's performance in the US, its most crucial market, flatlined as high inflation hammered households' spending on both sides of the Atlantic. Sales at the company declined by 1.4pc in the year to July 2024, with Diageo blaming a 2.5pc decline in North American sales on the 'cautious consumer environment'. 'In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic Americans turned to making cocktails at home, and they drank vast quantities of home cocktails,' says the City source. 'The whole thing wasn't sustainable. Diageo wasn't unique in that they benefited from it and then. But for the last year or two, it's continued to be weak.' Last year Terry Smith, the star fund manager, dumped his stake in Diageo, citing worries over the impact of weight loss drugs on the global alcohol market, given they have been shown to reduce consumption. Fewer people drinking alcohol has taken the shine off Diageo's stock in trade, say analysts. 'The company seemed oblivious to shifting consumer trends, with younger people showing less interest in drinking alcohol. At the same time, wealthier individuals cut back on luxury goods and that hurt Diageo's spirits sales,' says Dan Coatsworth, of AJ Bell. Feeling the pain Diageo has blamed its woes on declining consumer confidence and economic uncertainty in the global economy. In May, Ms Crew insisted that bosses 'continue to believe in the attractive long-term fundamentals of our industry and in our ability to outperform the market'. Diageo is not alone in feeling the pain amid shifting consumer tastes. 'Clearly she's had a very difficult set of circumstances, and Diageo hasn't done significantly worse than say, [Beefeater gin owner] Pernod Ricard, in terms of financial results,' says the City source. '[Diageo's performance] has set up a debate around [whether] this is pressure on consumers, whether it's low-income consumers or 21 year-olds who just don't have enough money to buy booze, or if it's more structural in that everybody's decided either don't want to drink booze, or they're taking skinny jabs and aren't able to drink booze.' Diageo has also had to contend with worries over how Donald Trump's presidency could hurt it. Diageo said earlier this year that Mr Trump's tariffs would cost it about £110m annually – despite Sir Keir Starmer signing a much-hyped trade deal with the US. This brought tariffs on British steel and aluminium down to zero but a 10pc levy on other goods including Diageo's drinks remains. Looking ahead Some investors have also been worried by the direction of the company under Ms Crew and are understood to have questioned whether key hires have the right level of experience to navigate the turmoil. 'The disquiet has been building,' said the city source says. 'We haven't seen an activist investor coming out, but I would be surprised if you met any investor who's saying this is the right track.' Not everyone is so downcast. 'We think there is a buying opportunity with shares currently undervalued,' says Verushka Shetty, analyst at Morningstar. 'Diageo's entire portfolio is the strongest in the industry, based on aggregate brand power.' Still, it all means there is little victory to be claimed in the success of Guinness for now. A search for a full time replacement is underway. In the meantime, chief financial officer Nik Jhangiani – who joined Diageo from Coca Cola last year – has been handed the reins as interim boss. He has unveiled plans to slash $500m (£372m) worth of costs from the company and sell off underperforming brands to help revitalise Diageo. Investment bank Jefferies called him a 'newish heavyweight CFO' in a note to investors this week, adding: 'We see him bringing fresh perspectives on cost discipline, cash and deleveraging, sharpening execution to drive greater consistency of delivery.' Shares rose by about 4pc on Wednesday as Ms Crew's departure was announced. But gains were quickly pared back – suggesting investors are wary of getting ahead of themselves. 'The cost cutting is great. It helps protect the profits. It helps protect the dividend. It helps reduce the leverage. It's the right thing to do,' says the city source. 'But at the end of the day, Diageo needs to return to growth. This is a business that used to be growing around 5pc per annum, and in the last 12 months, it's been flat, and it's probably going to be flat for at least the next six months.' Even with Guinness conquering the UK, it will be some time before the bosses in Diageo's plush London HQ have cause for a celebratory drink.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
A moment that changed me: I stopped drinking – and realised what friendship really meant
The conversation began with an apology. I'd rehearsed it many times, trying not to sound too defensive or pitiful. I'd walked through every potential rejection that might come as a result of letting my friend Gillian into a side of my life I'd tried hard to keep hidden. But she had just told me that she wanted to come to visit me in New Haven, so I was cornered. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm sober now.' I felt embarrassed. 'I have stopped drinking,' I added, to clarify. 'If you visit, I can't drink with you.' In the pause that followed, I imagined her politely trying to work her way out of coming to see me, now that our favourite thing to do together wasn't an option. 'Thank God,' she said. 'You were a nightmare when you drank.' That's the good thing about true friends: they're more likely to be honest than polite. I met Gillian in a pub in Glasgow in 2016, treating my hangover with a vodka and Diet Coke at 11am. We connected over the inevitable heartbreaks and uncertainty we were living through during our mid-20s and our plans to pursue further education in the US, and we got drunk together – often. Drinking had always been practical for me. Without effort, it dissolved the self-conscious, self-critical and awkward parts of myself. It was my support for social situations and making friends, something I had struggled with since secondary school. I'd heard about people who had this kind of relationship with alcohol and that, somewhere down the line, it becomes a problem. I thought I could delay that for as long as possible. I hid my emotional dependence on alcohol in plain sight. I made my drinking a performance, tidying up my sometimes bizarre, sometimes dangerous behaviour into fun anecdotes. I was the wildcard, the bohemian, the hedonist. My days were spent either hungover, drunk or looking to drink. There was a sense of community in that; I could always find someone in a similar headspace, recruit them to my cause and call them my friends. From centre stage, I didn't realise that the people closest to me were tired of The Lauren Show. With time, I started to realise that I drank even when I didn't want to, that I couldn't stop once I started, but I didn't think anyone else noticed. I still thought it was what made me interesting, creative, exciting – the reason people would want to be around me. In my last days of drinking, the anxiety that alcohol could no longer suppress turned to doom. I withdrew, watching the same episodes of BoJack Horseman on repeat in my bedroom. Early recovery was a lonely experience: I avoided most people for fear of what they would think of me as a sober person, someone to whom they could no longer relate. When I spent time with other sober people, I assumed they were just taking pity on me. When you stop drinking, you're confronted with the reasons you started. When Gillian arrived to see me in New Haven, I had to face the fact that I had long avoided emotional intimacy; I was uncomfortable being myself, even around those I loved. I felt vulnerable without alcohol as my armour and got my first taste of what actually goes into maintaining an adult friendship. Gillian and I filled our time together visiting libraries and museums, being present with each other, and talking about so much more than we did when we were busy piecing together nights out that I couldn't remember. To my surprise, we also laughed more during her visit than we ever had before. She wanted to spend time with me – and not a hologram of what I thought she wanted me to be. Alcohol wasn't the bonding agent I thought it was. In fact, it was the thing I was using to keep people at a distance. I realised that drinking was actually a barrier to making lasting connections, but sobriety wasn't – I just needed to get some practice. Friendship is an action and an experience, and trying to numb the parts I found uncomfortable meant I'd never truly experienced the benefits before. After Gillian returned home, I decided to approach my existing friendships with a bit more willingness and honesty. With new friends, whether they were sober or not, I could better get to know them, now that I was no longer obsessing about myself and how I was coming across. Entering my 30s, I have realised that friendship isn't something you can fall into and take for granted; it is a necessity. It's an age when many of us start families and take the next steps in our careers, while our parents often aren't as healthy as they used to be and you can't look for the adult in the room any more, because most of the time it's you. These realities require a support that alcohol can't offer, especially if it makes you unreliable, unpredictable or shut-down. Now when I tell friends – old and new – that I don't drink, I don't feel the need to apologise; I know we'll have a better time without the booze. No Lost Causes Club: An Honest Guide to Recovery, and How to Find Your Way Through It by Lauren McQuistin is published on 17 July by 4th Estate (£16.99). To support the Guardian, buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply
The Sun
9 hours ago
- The Sun
I turned to drink when I became a single mum, I'd blackout & have run-ins with police, but a dog walk changed everything
LIKE MANY of us, Lucy Rocca's relationship with booze started when she was just a teen, binge drinking on a Friday night. But as she got older, Lucy couldn't shake her need to drink to escape reality. 3 The mother-of-two, now 49, did well at school and went on to study law, and didn't see a problem with being a party girl as everyone was doing it. But Lucy was able to stop drinking at the age of 22 when she found out she was pregnant with her first daughter and stayed away from the booze while breastfeeding. But she soon went back to her old ways after nursing, she revealed: "It was a bottle of wine most nights with my husband." "But I didn't feel then that I had a dependency on it. I never felt like I was using alcohol to self-medicate - which, now, when I look back, I can see that I really was." Lucy says that while she drank a bottle of wine every night, she never saw it as a problem as she didn't consume it in the day or drink and drive. "We were buying really nice bottles of red wine and having one between us every night, thinking it was really grown up and sophisticated," she told FEMAIL. But her relationship with alcohol drastically changed when her husband left her a single mum at the age of 27, and she hit the 'self-destruct' button. She recalls drinking a bottle of wine every night after her daughter had gone to bed, using it as a crutch for husband walking out. Now, her days of drinking had become 'outright dangerous' and had even led the mum to have run-ins with the police. One particularly bad episode Lucy remembers is attending a concert with her boyfriend at the time. 3 I'm a mum of two, did drugs, drank wine everynight and didn't think I had an issue - it wasn't until a night at my parents which made me realise I was a functioning alcoholic She revealed she got so drunk that she lost him and woke up at midnight under a tree in Hyde Park with her belongings gone. "I'd lost my purse, my phone, my boyfriend. Two policemen were stood over me and I just couldn't remember anything," she adds. Lucy went into detox mode after the event, but found herself in a cycle of binging and then not drinking for weeks for the next six years. Nobody questioned her habits, she says, adding that it was normal for her generation to do it. "Given the cultural context [of the 1990s and early 2000s] that I was drinking in, it wasn't seen as this horrific thing," she explained. In 2010, when Lucy had completed her law degree, she struggled to get a job and found herself at a new low. One evening, she downed three bottles of wine while her daughter stayed with her dad and decided to talk the dog for a late night walk that changed her life forever. Lucy was so drunk she didn't make it home and collapsed in the middle of the street. What to do if you think are an alcoholic IF you're struggling with alcohol addiction, the most important thing is to recognise the problem and seek support - You don't have to face it alone. Seek Professional Help GP or Doctor – A medical professional can assess your situation and provide advice on treatment options. Therapists or Counsellors – Talking to an addiction specialist can help address underlying causes and develop coping strategies. Rehab or Detox Programmes – If physical dependence is severe, medically supervised detox may be necessary. Consider Support Groups Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) – A well-known 12-step programme that provides peer support. SMART Recovery – A science-based alternative to AA, focusing on self-empowerment. Local Support Groups – Many communities have groups tailored to different needs. It was only after a friend driving by had spotted her and called an ambulance that she got to safety. Lucy found herself in Sheffield General Hopsital and said it was the 'wake up call' she needed. She explained: "I just thought, 'That's it, I'm done.' I was terrified of drinking because of what had happened on that night. "Waking up in hospital was truly the most horrendous thing. I was so ashamed and it just rocked me to the core." Lucy spent the next 18 months sober before asking herself if she could drink again. That's when she realised she was much happier without it. Now, Lucy has launched Soberistas - an online 'community of non-judgmental people, helping one another to kick the booze and stay sober.' Having become a charity in 2023, Soberistas has grown into Lucy's fulltime job as she hits 14 years of sobriety. "One of the biggest problems that stopped people getting sober was that they were just too ashamed to talk about it - so they carried on drinking," she said. Now Soberistas provides a platform for people to talk anonymously about their drinking habits and find support.
Bloomberg
10 hours ago
- Health
- Bloomberg
The Quest for a Hangover-Free Buzz
By David Nutt is an accomplished professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, but he hasn't always been great at reading a room. In 2009 he was the UK government's top adviser on drugs, a key voice on a council tasked with recommending changes to the nation's drug policies. That was until he argued that the field's greatest challenge, the substance responsible for the most widespread harm, was alcohol. While this would have been considered heresy in many societies, it proved to be an especially untenable position in Britain. He was asked to resign from his government post two days after he shared his views with the press. All these years later, Nutt is quick to clarify that he appreciates the upside of drinking. 'Most people meet their partners with the help of alcohol,' he says. 'It promotes sociability, and there's not much else like it.' What he's been after, he says, is a safer, healthier way to approximate the buzz of booze—something that can deliver the fun bits and skip the addiction, the cirrhosis, the sloppy aggro nonsense. By the time he was on the government council, research had made clear that the root of many problems with alcohol was its neurological complexity, that the good parts were intertwined with the bad ones. Once Nutt had more time on his hands, he decided to try making his own molecule, one that could give him the fuzzy feelings of a couple glasses of wine and leave it at that.
The Guardian
14 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
A moment that changed me: I stopped drinking – and realised what friendship really meant
The conversation began with an apology. I'd rehearsed it many times, trying not to sound too defensive or pitiful. I'd walked through every potential rejection that might come as a result of letting my friend Gillian into a side of my life I'd tried hard to keep hidden. But she had just told me that she wanted to come to visit me in New Haven, so I was cornered. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm sober now.' I felt embarrassed. 'I have stopped drinking,' I added, to clarify. 'If you visit, I can't drink with you.' In the pause that followed, I imagined her politely trying to work her way out of coming to see me, now that our favourite thing to do together wasn't an option. 'Thank God,' she said. 'You were a nightmare when you drank.' That's the good thing about true friends: they're more likely to be honest than polite. I met Gillian in a pub in Glasgow in 2016, treating my hangover with a vodka and Diet Coke at 11am. We connected over the inevitable heartbreaks and uncertainty we were living through during our mid-20s and our plans to pursue further education in the US, and we got drunk together – often. Drinking had always been practical for me. Without effort, it dissolved the self-conscious, self-critical and awkward parts of myself. It was my support for social situations and making friends, something I had struggled with since secondary school. I'd heard about people who had this kind of relationship with alcohol and that, somewhere down the line, it becomes a problem. I thought I could delay that for as long as possible. I hid my emotional dependence on alcohol in plain sight. I made my drinking a performance, tidying up my sometimes bizarre, sometimes dangerous behaviour into fun anecdotes. I was the wildcard, the bohemian, the hedonist. My days were spent either hungover, drunk or looking to drink. There was a sense of community in that; I could always find someone in a similar headspace, recruit them to my cause and call them my friends. From centre stage, I didn't realise that the people closest to me were tired of The Lauren Show. With time, I started to realise that I drank even when I didn't want to, that I couldn't stop once I started, but I didn't think anyone else noticed. I still thought it was what made me interesting, creative, exciting – the reason people would want to be around me. In my last days of drinking, the anxiety that alcohol could no longer suppress turned to doom. I withdrew, watching the same episodes of BoJack Horseman on repeat in my bedroom. Early recovery was a lonely experience: I avoided most people for fear of what they would think of me as a sober person, someone to whom they could no longer relate. When I spent time with other sober people, I assumed they were just taking pity on me. When you stop drinking, you're confronted with the reasons you started. When Gillian arrived to see me in New Haven, I had to face the fact that I had long avoided emotional intimacy; I was uncomfortable being myself, even around those I loved. I felt vulnerable without alcohol as my armour and got my first taste of what actually goes into maintaining an adult friendship. Gillian and I filled our time together visiting libraries and museums, being present with each other, and talking about so much more than we did when we were busy piecing together nights out that I couldn't remember. To my surprise, we also laughed more during her visit than we ever had before. She wanted to spend time with me – and not a hologram of what I thought she wanted me to be. Alcohol wasn't the bonding agent I thought it was. In fact, it was the thing I was using to keep people at a distance. I realised that drinking was actually a barrier to making lasting connections, but sobriety wasn't – I just needed to get some practice. Friendship is an action and an experience, and trying to numb the parts I found uncomfortable meant I'd never truly experienced the benefits before. After Gillian returned home, I decided to approach my existing friendships with a bit more willingness and honesty. With new friends, whether they were sober or not, I could better get to know them, now that I was no longer obsessing about myself and how I was coming across. Entering my 30s, I have realised that friendship isn't something you can fall into and take for granted; it is a necessity. It's an age when many of us start families and take the next steps in our careers, while our parents often aren't as healthy as they used to be and you can't look for the adult in the room any more, because most of the time it's you. These realities require a support that alcohol can't offer, especially if it makes you unreliable, unpredictable or shut-down. Now when I tell friends – old and new – that I don't drink, I don't feel the need to apologise; I know we'll have a better time without the booze. No Lost Causes Club: An Honest Guide to Recovery, and How to Find Your Way Through It by Lauren McQuistin is published on 17 July by 4th Estate (£16.99). To support the Guardian, buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply
