Below are the key morning headlines from today's papers, featuring the Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail & more - see the full Press section here.

- Whitbread sells Costa Coffee to Coca-Cola for £3.9bn. Whitbread (WTB)  signalled it was planning to demerge Costa earlier in the year. But the FTSE 100 company said the deal was at a substantial premium to what it would otherwise have managed to drum up.

- WPP (WPP)  is poised to anoint Mark Read, the former head of its digital division, as the successor to Sir Martin Sorrell. His appointment could be unveiled as soon as Tuesday, when the world’s largest advertising agency publishes results for the first half of the year, according to industry sources

- Vodafone wins final approval for Indian merger. Vodafone Group (VOD)  has won final approval for its plan to defend itself from a brutal price war in India after a merger with rival operator Idea cleared the final regulatory hurdle.

- Watchdog provisionally clears merger of Npower and SSE (SSE) . The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) dismissed fears that reducing the sector’s Big Six suppliers to five would dampen rising competition in the market.

- Springowl Asset Management, the New York hedge fund led by activist Jason Ader forced to show his hand after $100m gamble on Playtech (PTEC)  . The American investor who helped reshape the gambling industry by driving Bwin.party into the clutches of GVC Holdings has quietly built a $100 million stake in Playtech, the troubled gaming technology group.

- Bookmaker denies pension ‘diddle’. GVC Holdings (GVC)  has dismissed claims by pensions campaigners that the terms of its recent takeover of Ladbrokes Coral Group amounted to a “great pension robbery”. According to the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), a union-backed organisation, the FTSE 100 gambling operator is trying to “diddle” pensioners out of £700 million due from the acquisition of Ladbrokes Coral.

- Revenues keep on rolling at Stobart. Revenues, profits and dividends are all on cruise control at Eddie Stobart Logistics (ESL)  but the company with the famous trucks is finding it difficult to persuade investors to join it on the road. New contracts with Britvic and Pepsico and with Cemex and its cement mixers — as well as doing the unseen warehousing and ecommerce organisation for the likes of John Lewis — sent first-half revenues up 25 per cent to £359 million.

- Recruitment firm Hays (HAS)  is to pay a special dividend following a rise in full-year profit. It reported a 17% rise in pre-tax profits to £238.5m in the 12 months to June 30, boosted by a strong performance in its international unit. Hays recorded double-digit fee growth in all of its territories except the UK and Ireland, where they rose by just 2%