A New Tunnel Vision

The scene had all the hallmarks of a populist uprising. Some 6,000 infuriated owners of Eurotunnel stock converged last week in a massive, hangar-like convention hall near Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport to topple the company's embattled, button-down board. Led by a fiery businessman with multiple fraud convictions and a chairman designate who likes to travel by motor scooter, the rebels then anointed a new board made up of unemployed executives, retirees, a sociologist and one man under investigation for money laundering (which he denies). Welcome to shareholder activism, French style.

Their prize: the company that built and...