Business week in pictures

Alistair Darling outside 11 Downing Street prior to presenting the last budget before the general election. The chancellor provided only a small lift to a struggling economy over the coming year through a phased increase in fuel duties and a two-year stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers paid for by a 5% 'mansion tax'
Photograph: Getty Images

The Scroby Sands offshore wind farm. The government plans to take a direct equity stake in North Sea wind farms through a green investment bank using cash raised from the sale of assets such as the Channel tunnel rail link, Alistair Darling said in his budget speech
Photograph: Albanpix Ltd/Rex Features

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, seen from a satellite. The emirate's government announced $9.5bn proposals to save state-run company Dubai World from crippling debt
Photograph: DigitalGlobe/Getty Images

Semi-detached homes in Salford. Alistair Darling announced an immediate two-year stamp duty exemption for first-time buyers on homes costing less than £250,000.
Photograph: Christopher Thomond

Universities in England will see class sizes balloon and the quality of courses deteriorate, the lecturers' union warned after the chancellor announced an extra 20,000 places for September
Photograph: David Levene

Belize City, as seen from the air. Alistair Darling announced in the budget that the government will sign tax information exchange agreements with three offshore tax havens: Dominica, Grenada and Belize – the home of the Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft
Photograph: Macduff Everton/Corbis

Sizewell A (left) and Sizewell B nuclear plants. The government confirmed plans for a carbon levy on energy bills which it hopes will make building new nuclear plants viable. Nuclear constructors have warned they will not invest the billions of pounds necessary without government guarantees
Photograph: Graham Turner

The chancellor said he would extend by a year the guaranteed offer of jobs or training for all 18- to 24-year-olds until March 2012
Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The prospect of fighting an election against a backdrop of record petrol prices led the chancellor to postpone a 3p-per-litre increase in fuel duty, which will now be staggered across 10 months
Photograph: Ian Waldie/Getty Images AsiaPac

After a long, hard winter left the nation's roads pitted with craters, the Treasury is investing £100m to plug more than 1m potholes
Photograph: Alamy

Alistair Darling announced a series of measures aimed at supporting small businesses, including billions in new lending from state-controlled banks, cuts in business rates and the extension of an arrangement that allows struggling firms to spread their tax payments http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/25/budget-2010-small-business
Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Striking Brirish Airways cabin crew gesture at a BA flight at Heathrow. The airline announced that strikers would be stripped of their travel perks
Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

The Joint Strike Fighter, a joint venture including BAE Systems. But BAE was dealt a major blow when the government awarded the first phase of a £4bn contract to build new armoured cars for the British army to America's General Dynamics
Photograph: Lockheed Martin/PA

The German carmaker Daimler, owner of Mercedes-Benz, agreed to pay $185m to settle a lurid series of international bribery charges levelled by US prosecutors, including an allegation that the company gave a brand new armoured S-class Mercedes as a birthday present to an official in Turkmenistan's authoritarian government
Photograph: Gero Breloer/AP

The Guardian Media Group’s chief executive, Carolyn McCall, quit after 24 years to join the low-cost airline easyJet
Photograph: Sarah Lee