Eurotunnel SA shareholder Nicolas Miguet stood on a rusty ladder outside the old Paris stock exchange on September 14, addressing a crowd of 200 through a megaphone, before leading a march to the Paris Commercial Court.

“If people invest their money it’s for their children or their retirement, not to give it to jerks in Manhattan who buy Dom Perignon by the case to fill up their bathtubs,” shouted Mr. Miguet, 45, who plans to seek the French presidency next year. “This is a fight of good against evil.”

Mr. Miguet’s so-called “jerks” include Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Deutsche Bank AG and New York hedge funds Elliott Management Corp. and Resurgence Asset Management. It’s a taste of what bondholders face in trying to get their money back from Eurotunnel, which filed for bankruptcy protection two months ago.

The operator of the British-French rail link under the English Channel used a French law that came into effect January 1 and that gives bond investors no vote in how a company reorganizes in bankruptcy proceedings. Eurotunnel, based in Paris and Folkstone, England, filed with the French court on July 11.

As a result, the sophisticated investors have little prospect of recovering all their losses. Eurotunnel bonds have tumbled as much as 30% in the past four months, reducing their value by about $250 million. The investors, typically the first to exploit profit opportunities, didn’t even know the company had entered bankruptcy proceedings until hours after the filing during a meeting with company officials, according to ARCO, which represents bondholders who own $3.37 billion of Eurotunnel bonds.

“These guys should have thought of this when they put all of this dough into Eurotunnel,” a Paris-based lawyer for creditors including Deutsche Bank, Eric Cafritz, said. “The standard hedge fund approach of kicking everybody’s butt or pulling every lever just doesn’t play out. They can’t get their minds around it. It’s hard for them to intervene.”

Eurotunnel’s 862 million pounds ($1.6 billion) of 1% bonds maturing in 2040, the lowest ranking of its $11.7 billion of debt, trades at 10% of face value, down from as much as 18% in the past four months and 40% five years ago. Standard & Poor’s cut ratings on the company’s senior loans to ‘D’ for default on August 16 after Eurotunnel missed a payment to creditors.

France’s new bankruptcy law lets companies seek protection from creditors, just as they can in America under Chapter 11. Until this year, 90% of French bankruptcies resulted in liquidation, according to law firm Allen & Overy.

In America and Britain, bondholders get paid before stock investors, who typically get wiped out. Under French law, neither gets a vote, so shareholders are at less of a disadvantage. Bond investors in France have less chance of recovering assets than in Germany, Britain or 11 other European countries, according to credit analyst Fitch Ratings. New York- and London-based Fitch says it ranks senior debt sold by French companies on average one step lower than in Britain. The difference means French borrowing costs are as much as 46 basis points higher than they would be otherwise, based on estimates by New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Eurotunnel Chief Executive Officer Jacques Gounon, 53, a former French civil servant, says shareholders should have “significant participation in the capital,” according to a letter to shareholders on the company’s Web site. He initially wanted creditors to write off $3.37 billion of debt in return for 1% of the stock plus $141 million in cash; shareholders would have gotten as much as 13%.

Mr. Gounon “has continually insisted that shareholders get something back,” a senior credit analyst at Insight Investment Management in London, Alex Moss, said.The firm oversees the equivalent of $18 billion of corporate debt. “In any other country in Europe they wouldn’t have had a hope.”

Mr. Miguet has more than political ambition at stake. Through personal holdings and a financial publishing company he controls, Mr. Miguet owns 6 million Eurotunnel shares, or 0.2% of the total. The stake was worth 2.6 million euros on May 12, the last day the shares traded.