EUROTUNNEL is pressing creditors to write off half its debts after an unexpected show of shareholder unity in Calais.

Shareholders averted another potential French revolution by backing Jacques Gounon, the chairman and chief executive, at the Chunnel operator’s annual meeting.

Overwhelming support from 98 per cent enabled him to enter talks with creditors with more confidence.

During a low-key three-hour meeting, Mr Gounon told shareholders: "We are going to struggle and fight together to do our utmost to avoid bankruptcy and ensure neogtiations are on the right track."

A plan to oust Mr Gounon by Jean-Louis Raymond, who recently quit as the £150,000 chief executive and threatened to wage war on a man he had earlier villified for criticising him in public, was rejected. He will stay on as a non-executive director.

Compared to the stormy scenes at last year’s meeting in Paris, this year’s event in a sports centre in Coquelles was a calmer affair, with shareholders more aware than ever that the company in which they invested with such high hopes more than 10 years ago was close to going bust.

Maverick investor Nicolas Miguet, who led last’s year’s coup that unseated the Kent-led board and threatened to rip bricks out of the tunnel if the dire financial situation was not turned around, set the tone from the start. He called for unity, a message repeated throughout the hall.

Insiders suspected that deals had been done behind closed doors before the meeting to guarantee solidarity.

Mr Gounon wants creditors to write off around £3billion of the £6.4billion debt hanging over Eurotunnel. He believes that is the only way for the Anglo-French company to get out of its financial quagmire.

With interest payments running at a staggering £298million a year, and operational profits amounting to only £170million, Eurotunnel faces a looming crisis.

More than 400 jobs are to be shed in Cheriton and Coquelles as the company faces the toughest few weeks of its short existence.

Mr Gounon is speaking to representative of the financial institutions who now hold the debt.

Mostly, these are US-owned hedge funds that bought the debt from the original lenders, mainly banks.

Whether these new creditors are in the mood to write off debts is the key question for Eurotunnel.