Fortis, the Benelux financial services group brought to its knees by the credit crunch, has lost another €295 million (£279 million) in currency deals in little more than a fortnight.

It today said it took a massive gamble on 8 December buying dollars and sterling ahead of its planned deal to be effectively taken over by French bank BNP Paribas with the support of the Belgian government.

But BNP's €14.5 billion offer to buy Fortis' Belgian and Luxembourg operations was successfully challenged in the Brussels Court of Appeal last week, and the deal has been suspended.

Fortis today decided to unwind the currency deals that had been put in place as part of the BNP deal. It said that it had originally agreed to provide a portion of funding for a structured credit portfolio called Royal Park Investments, which contains much of the toxic investments made by Fortis.

As part of the deal, it agreed to fund them in the currencies of the assets in the portfolio, which meant it had to buy pounds and dollars.

Now the deal has been shelved, and Fortis has "decided to sell the US dollars and the pounds sterling again".

Given that the pound has since lost 8.3% of its value against the euro and the dollar 7.4%, that has resulted in an enormous loss.