What the Sunday papers said

Having seen off a £4.6bn bid from R20 last week, managed pub and bar group Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) is considering snapping up Whitbread's non-core pub restaurants for between £300m and £500m. Analysts suggest that M&B will have its pub estate revalued later this year to a figure approaching £4.5bn. - Mail On Sunday​

Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) mounted a robust defence last week in the face of R20's 550p per share bid, which valued the pub group at £2.7bn. It pointed to its market-leading position in the pub eating-out market and its ability to capture existing and future demand growth. M&B said criticism from the R20 camp surrounding its earnings growth record was unwarranted, while cost pressures had put pressure on its shares in recent months. R20 is expected to look at acquiring other pubcos, following its failure to buy M&B. - Sunday Times​

BSkyB is on the verge of securing a deal with Setanta to begin pub screenings of Premier League football packages won by the Irish broadcaster in last week's rights auction. The deal, expected to be signed this week, will see Sky broadcast Setanta's packages of games to Sky's 40,000 pub and club subscribers. Sky won four of the six packages put up for auction following intervention by the European Commission which forced the Premier League to break up its games into different packages. Setanta won the other two packages. - Sunday Telegraph​

Paying £392m for two of the six packages of live football TV rights auctioned off by the Premier League last week, Irish broadcaster Setanta beat off rival bids from NTL and Channel 4, among others. Sky will televise 92 of the 138 on-TV games from August 2007. It can still claim to be the 'home of football', since all games, inclusing Setanta's, will be available via its platform. - Observer​

Affluent, ageing babyboomers and an experimental youth market are boosting wine sales and the firm built up by brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo has grown to become the second biggest largest wine company in the world after publicy-listed Constellation Brands. Gallo is rapidly becoming a major player outside the US, with success in Australia and France, where its Red Bicyclette has found favour with French wine drinkers. - Sunday Times ​