Last year in March, Rolls-Royce Holdings plc installed a representative from San Francisco-based activist fund ValueAct Capital Management LP to its board. The move was considered by many as groundbreaking in that a U.S. activist fund manager had never been installed onto the board of a FTSE 100 company before, especially one so ingrained in British culture. The activist director, Bradley Singer, received a seat in a collaborative manner with no public display of hostility. And his candidacy was boosted by the support of a large number of European institutional investors, another development that suggests the continent was becoming more...