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Gemalto, the firm that was allegedly the subject of a mobile phone SIM card hacking attack by US and UK intelligence agencies, has announced the results of an internal investigation, external into the suspected breach. The results "give us reasonable grounds to believe that an operation by NSA and GCHQ probably happened," it said, but it added that the attacks "could not have resulted in a massive theft of SIM encryption keys".

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Ronan Dunne, chief executive of O2, says Telefonica's £10.25bn deal to sell O2 to Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Whampoa will take up to a year. The deal will take "a few more weeks" to negotiate, and then the firms have to get clearance from the EU, he says. "Realistically, given what's happened in other markets, it could be up to a year before the deal actually closes," he ads.

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Simon Entwhistle, deputy chief executive of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) tells Radio 5 live that the change in nuisance calls rules will act as "a huge deterrent" to cold-calling firms as they'll know it's much easier for the ICO to get at them. "The last couple of years they've thought they could get away with it... it'll help us put a stop to this problem," he says.

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Superdry owner Supergroup has said its chief financial officer, Shaun Wills, has had to step down with immediate effect, external after declaring personal bankruptcy. In a statement the company says: "Shaun was made the subject of a personal bankruptcy order on 10 February 2015. This is a personal matter, on which Supergroup will not comment further, and is wholly unrelated to the financial position of the company." Shares have fallen 3.7% to 976.50p this morning.

The FTSE 100 index has opened lower this morning . It is currently 0.2% down at 6,934.51. Morrisons is higher after the announcement that former Tesco executive David Potts will take the helm following the announced departure last month of Dalton Philips. Whitbread is the highest riser so far after its trading update earlier.

• Morrisons is 1.09% higher at 193.90p

• Whitbread is 1.96% higher at 5205.00p

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Whitbread says it expects to post full-year profit will be at the top end of market forecasts as strong demand at its Costa Coffee and Premier inn chains helped deliver a 5.8% rise in fourth quarter underlying sales. It says like-for-like sales rose 8.6% at its Premier Inn business and by 6.9% at its UK Costa stores in the 11 weeks to 12 February. Analysts had expected full-year pre-tax profit to be between £437m and £495m.

Kamal Ahmed
BBC Business editor

In the court of public opinion, external this is a big day for these two guys BBC News - HSBC bosses to answer MPs' questions

Well it couldn't last forever could it? Or, in fact, longer than about 15 hours. The FTSE 100 Index has, having reached a new record high close of 6,949.63, opened 0.09% lower 6,943.57.

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Most of the biggest companies on the FTSE 100 are international, so when the index hits a high it "tells us quite a lot about what is happening in the world in general" BBC economics editor Robert Peston tells the Today programme. "It doesn't just mean that things in Britain are ok," he says.

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Mr Lloyd says some firms that market solar panels, accident claims and payment protection insurance among others have been relying on a higher bar of "substantial distress" to avoid prosecution, but that is to be removed. From now on they will only have to be shown to have caused nuisance by making those calls. "That's got to be a deterrent, but we have got to see the ICO use those powers," he adds.

TSB's statutory pre-tax profits rose 100% to £170m for the year from £84.8m a year earlier. But the bank says this figure includes loans from former parent Lloyds Banking Group, which effectively amount to start-up money, and are due to be paid back over a number of years.

Wizz Air, which says it is the biggest low-cost airline in central and eastern Europe, has announced plans to float on the London Stock Exchange with an initial offer price of £11.50. It said it expected to float on 2 March, external. In June 2014 it postponed its London flotation plans.

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TSB has reported annual core pre-tax profit rose 2.3% to £133.7m, external compared with £130.7m a year earlier. TSB became Britain's seventh biggest lender after it was hived off from Lloyds Banking Group last June,

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Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, tells Today that "it looks like" the government is going to announce that it agrees with the findings of the consumer watchdog's research into nuisance calls. He says the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has so far only managed to prosecute nine firms for nuisance calls because the bar for prosecutions was too high. But the government will announce later that the ICO will receive significantly greater powers "within days".

Image source, Reuters

Former Tesco UK retail director David Potts has been appointed chief executive of Morrisons, one of the "big four" supermarkets in the UK. Mr Potts became chief executive of Tesco's Irish, then Asian businesses, before leaving the firm in 2011. He will join Morrisons on 16 March.

Telefonica said it expected revenue to grow by more than 7% this year, despite a 19% drop in 2014 operating income. The telecoms group posted net profit of €3bn (£2.19bn), down 35% a year earlier, hit by the weaker Venezuelan currency and restructuring costs in Germany. Operating income was €15.52bn. Both were down on analysts' expectations.

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Simon Walker of the IoD tells Today the limits on skilled migrants are "draconian". He says the fact the government can't block EU migrants means all the burden falls on those people coming from outside the EU, "and that's really damaging". "They should be able to come here freely they are qualified and able and many of them have been students here," he adds.

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Labour MP Mike Kane, one of the members of the committee of MPs due to question HSBC bosses Stuart Gulliver and Douglas Flint this afternoon, says both Mr Gulliver's and Conservative peer Lord Fink's tax arrangements look "secretive and murky". "Tax evasion is illegal, and nobody's accusing Stuart Gulliver or Lord Fink of that, it's just these complicated, murky, secretive arrangements seem to mean they don't pay their fair share of tax, " he says.

New rules making it easier to prosecute companies responsible for nuisance marketing calls are expected to be announced by the government later today. Last year there were more than a hundred and seventy five thousand complaints about such calls and text messages, but there have only been a handful of prosecutions. This is because callers need to have caused "substantial damage or substantial distress - a bar which the government says is set too high.

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The Institute of Directors (IoD) says seeking to reduce net migration will be seen as one of the government's biggest mistakes. It says current controls on skilled non-EU immigrants are "damaging and restrictive" and it is backing calls from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to raise the limit of 20,700 visas that can be issued. Simon Walker director general of the IoD tells Today he is hearing that the limits are damaging growth and hurting employment, particularly among technology start ups. The IoD would scrap the cap completely, he says.