THE French state owned insurance company - GAN which owns Touchline Insurance in Ireland - has reported a huge increase of consolidated losses in the first half of this year, forecast a loss for the whole year and said that it needed more capital.

Against a background of rising controversy about massive losses in some state owned enterprises in recent years, GAN reported that losses in the first half had risen to 965 million francs (£116 million) from 387 million francs in the first half of last year, owing mainly to problems in its property portfolio.

The total loss on property was 1.787 billion francs.