The Spring Budget caused controversy and an unexpected U-turn by the UK government, all due to the National Insurance Contributions (NIC) increase for the self-employed.

Under the Budget proposals, Class 4 NIC would have increased from 9% to 10% in April 2018, and from 10% to 11% in April 2019. The changes were intended to redress the imbalance between employees and the self-employed. However, the change was heavily criticised for breaking the Conservative Party's 2015 manifesto pledge not to increase NIC.

It was almost a single-issue week for the euro, that issue being the possibility that Geert Wilders' anti-everything nationalist party could do well in Wednesday's Dutch general election. Were he to do so it would, supposedly, pave the way for an even bigger anti-EU upset in next month's French presidential election. It didn't, and the status quo was preserved. The euro enjoyed a relief rally as soon as the exit polls were revealed.

There has been much misreporting in the press recently concerning the removal of certain tax havens from Portugal's Offshore Blacklist.

The only tax haven jurisdictions that have been removed are Jersey, the Isle of Man and Uruguay.

We have seen a number of recent press articles in national newspapers, written by a well known European financial services company based in Lisbon and the Algarve, stating that Portugal had removed 15 countries from their Tax Haven Blacklist. Put simply, this is factually incorrect.

A reversal of fortunes saw the euro move close to the front of the field, two thirds of a cent behind the US dollar, while the pound lost two euro cents and only narrowly avoided last place. Sterling continued with its recent habit of vacillating between success and failure: on five of the last ten working days it came top among the major currencies and on four it took the wooden spoon.

If you live in Portugal or have Portuguese assets, make sure your estate planning is in order. While the local equivalent of inheritance tax is relatively straightforward, succession law here is very different to the UK. If you do not understand how the rules work, your estate may not be distributed in line with your wishes or could attract more taxation than it needs to.

Most of the economic data from Euroland either beat forecast, were an improvement on the previous month or both. Among the provisional purchasing managers' index readings, which measure the vigour of the private sector, only French manufacturers reported any slowdown in growth. Germany's economy expanded by 0.4% in the fourth quarter of last year, less than Britain's upwardly-revised 0.7% but enough to make it the class leader for calendar 2016.

On June 9, with his 150-year-old Portuguese corporate dynasty close to collapse, patriarch Ricardo Espirito Santo Salgado made a desperate attempt to save it.

Salgado signed two letters to Venezuela’s state oil company, which had bought $365 million in bonds from his family’s holding company. The holding company was in financial trouble. But the letters, according to copies seen by Reuters, assured the Venezuelans that their investment was safe.

Less than a fifth of a cent separated the euro from the week's joint losers, the US dollar and the pound. The single currency fell by an average of -0.5% against the other dozen most actively-traded currencies. There were two angles to the euro's problems. One was the Euroland economic data, which were more inclined to disappoint than to impress. Notably, fourth quarter growth for both the euro zone and Germany came in below forecast at a provisional 0.4%, lagging the United States' 0.5% and Britain's 0.6%. The other irritant was politics, with right-wing anti-EU candidates continuing to lead the polls in France and the Netherlands.