Planet Business

Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY

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The number of bottles of the world’s top-selling Scotch whisky brand, Diageo’s Johnnie Walker, that are sold every second, according to the drinks company, which also sells JB, Bell’s, White Horse and Buchanan’s.

£3 billion

The annual sales of Diageo’s Scotch whisky brands, up 50 per cent over the last five years thanks to demand from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Scotch resonates with consumers “from Boston to Beijing”, according to chief executive Paul Walsh.

£1 billion

The sum that Diageo will pour into Scotch whisky production over the next five years, with the investment building two distilleries in Scotland and creating 100 permanent jobs.

£40 million

The amount that rival Pernod Ricard, the world’s second biggest Scotch producer, indicated last week it would invest in ramping up production capacity of its top-selling Scotch brands such as Ballantine’s and Chivas Regal.

Getting to know: Marisol Touraine

French minister of social affairs Marisol Touraine (right) will be popular in some quarters but persona non grata in others after she announced that France’s new socialist government is to restore the right of French workers to retire at 60 – a move Touraine described as “a measure of justice for those who were the hardest hit by the reform of 2010”.

It doesn’t mean everyone in France retires at 60, but it does mean people who started work at 18 or 19 and have paid 41½ years of pension contributions can clock off at that age, rather than the 62 years minimum imposed under Sarkozy.

France’s largest business lobby, Mouvement des Entreprises de France, said it was a “worrying for the financial future of the pension systems”. Touraine said 110,000 workers would benefit.

The lexicon: Growsterity

Growsterity is a particularly bad portmanteau that’s been knocking around for the last couple of months, ever since Jyrki Katainen, prime minister of Finland, championed his own government’s success at the some say incompatible twin policy goal of growth and austerity-led cuts to national debt, dubbing it “growsterity”.

German chancellor Angela Merkel prefers to talk about austerity with a growth component. Meanwhile, the debate about whether austerity and growth can ever go hand in hand in the euro zone – outside the confines of groansome neologisms – continues to rage.

Image of the week

Political turmoil in Greece is taking its toll on its tourism industry, as the popularity of Greece’s sandy beach resorts, blue waters and ancient temples wilts in the heat of its economic crisis.

The pain is already being felt. Tourism receipts for the first quarter of 2012 have tumbled 15 per cent to €396 million, according to the Bank of Greece.

The tourist pictured above is walking by the closed Esperia Palace Hotel in the capital Athens, with the graffiti on the wall reading “closed forever”.

Greece, which is due to hold fresh elections on June 17th, is now in its fifth year of recession.

Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters