Monday newspaper round-up: Google, Rolls-Royce, Tullow Oil

Google is developing a new virtual-reality headset for smartphones, and adding extra support for the technology to its Android operating system, as it challenges Facebook's Oculus for an early lead in Silicon Valley’s latest platform war. The new headset will be a successor to Cardboard. the cheap-and-cheerful mobile VR viewer that Google launched in 2014, and feature better sensors, lenses and a more solid plastic casing, said people familiar with its plans. The smartphone-based device will be similar to the Gear VR, a collaboration between Samsung and Oculus that went on sale to consumers late last year. – Financial Times

The €500 note, $100 bill and £50 note are rarely found in the average consumer’s wallet in today’s world of easy digital payments and “contactless” bank cards. But with cash still very much king in the underworld of terrorists, drug lords and tax cheats, a new paper has called for the abolition of “the currency of corrupt elites”. – Financial Times

US multinationals such as Google, Facebook and Amazon will be forced to publicly disclose their earnings and tax bills in Europe, under legislation being drafted by the EU executive. The European commission is to table legislation in early April aimed at making the world’s largest multinational corporations open their tax arrangements with EU governments to full public scrutiny. – Guardian

Rolls-Royce is poised to cut its dividend payment to shareholders for the first time in almost 25 years, underlining the crisis at the famous engineering group. The dividend cut will be a blow to Britain’s leading pension funds, who are amongst the biggest shareholders in the FTSE 100 company. – Guardian

The collapse of the Schengen system of open borders risks plunging Europe into fresh economic turmoil, Hungary’s foreign minister has warned. Europe’s escalating migration crisis - which saw over a million people pour into the continent last year - has led to the re-introduction of temporary border controls in the EU for the first time time in two decades, threatening to reverse one of Brussels’ landmark integration projects. – Telegraph

Debt-laden oil explorer Tullow Oil is expected to report 2015 profits of $600m, well below the previous year’s almost $1.1bn, as the ongoing oil rout continues to erode value across oil and gas firms. But the firm is nonetheless touted as a “prime choice” for the return of investment to oil-rich West Africa, which could position Tullow to survive a prolonged downturn in the oil market. - Telegraph

Britain’s war chest for emergencies has risen by $25 billion over the past year to protect against market chaos if the country votes to leave the European Union. The government’s foreign currency reserves have increased by 34 per cent in the past 12 months, from $73.4 billion to $98.2 billion. It was the largest increase in a year since 2001. – The Times

The oil price rout, collapsing valuations and a growing mountain of debt left 80 per cent of Britain’s oil companies floundering in the red by the end of last year, according to research carried out for The Times. The number of loss-making UK oil and gas companies on AIM in the final quarter of last year rose to 64, up 10 per cent on the same period a year earlier, according to an analysis that highlights the impact of the low oil price. – The Times

A row has erupted between the Serious Fraud Office and one of London’s leading law firms over figures said to show that the agency ignored tip-offs because of budget cuts. The SFO accused Pinsent Masons yesterday of “deliberately” misinterpreting data showing that while the number of whistleblowing reports to the agency had risen last year by 324 to 2,832, only 16 new investigations had been opened. – The Times