I am pleased that our 1996 results will represent steady growth in profit performance, as promised.”The company said trading at United Distillers, the spirits subsidiary, continued to improve. Volumes increased by 1 per cent in 1996 compared with the previous year, with single malts and de luxe Scotch whiskies the best performers. In line with the rest of the industry, Guinness has attempted to stimulate sluggish world-wide demand with increased marketing expenditure, which it said increased by 10 per cent last year, 15 per cent in the second half.Price increases, the other bugbear of the spirits industry in recent years, remained modest with rises of only 3 per cent in the best markets leading to an overall increase of 1.5 per cent for the division as a whole.Guinness Brewing, the traditional stout ale core of the group, saw better volume rises with Guinness Stout up by 5 per cent and Draught Guinness 8 per cent higher. Again the increase was acquired through heavy marketing spending, with 10 per cent more put behind advertising stout. The roll- out of Guinness Irish Pubs continued with 1,200 now operating under the marketing umbrella.Cruzcampo, the Spanish subsidiary where lack of consumer confidence and political uncertainty has held back profits, continued to languish with a further 4 per cent fall in the beer market and a switch from high- margin on-premises sales to lower margin take-home trade..

A former Bundesbank chief warned yesterday that the German government would have difficulty cutting its budget deficit by enough to meet the target for the single European currency. The warning from Karl-Otto Pohl coincided with new figures showing that government borrowing last year had overshot the 3 per cent of GDP ceiling by more than expected. Theo Waigel, the German finance minister, said: “The budget result makes it clear what a difficult situation the federal finances are in.”
He added that to meet the limits set out in the Maastricht Treaty, the government would have to continue to find savings “with greater determination”.Mr Pohl, speaking at a conference in Paris, said he still expected monetary union to be launched on time. But he said: “It could still be possible that the whole exercise will be postponed or may even fail.”He said that without a significant pick-up in growth, Germany was unlikely to get its budget deficit below 3 per cent of GDP. This threatened the launch of the single currency because the German public would lose confidence if the Maastricht criteria were fudged.Opinion polls show that the majority of Germans are opposed to monetary union.

Many believe the new Euro will not be as strong as the mark.Mr Pohl, now a director of private bank Sal Oppenheim, also criticised French efforts to make sure the European Central Bank would be under political control, saying its independence was essential.Figures published yesterday showed that the German budget deficit amounted to DM78.3bn last year, DM18.4bn above target. Far lower-than-expected tax revenues meant the shortfall amounted to 3.9 per cent of GDP, well above the Maastricht target.Most forecasts, including those published by organisations such as the OECD and IMF, suggest that this year’s deficit – the decisive figure for membership of the single currency – will be very close to 3 per cent.But some economists are much gloomier about prospects for the country’s growth this year, and predict that the German government will struggle to meet the ambitious target it has insisted on more vociferously than anybody else.Mr Pohl said Germany was in a difficult situation, having told both its European partners and the public that the criteria must be interpreted strictly. “I have no idea how the government will solve this very difficult problem,” he said.. Frankie Dettori’s seven consecutive wins at Ascot last year cost Stanley Leisure pounds 2m out of a total hit to the industry of pounds 30m, the betting shops to casinos group said yesterday. Describing it as “the worst day ever in the UK bookmaking business”, the chairman, Leonard Steinberg, said one of the group’s Gus Carter shops paid out pounds 235,000 on a single bet. The “Dettori effect”, as Mr Steinberg called it, resulted in two payouts of more than pounds 200,000, another over pounds 100,000 and 27 payments of more than pounds 10,000.