Motives of mergers and acquisitions by state-owned enterprises: a taxonomy and international evidence

Purpose This paper looks at state-owned enteprises (SOEs) from the angle of the Market for Corporate Control (MCC) and analyzes in detail the reported rationales of a sample of 355 M&A deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002–2012. The aim, after having created a taxonomy of deal motivations, is to empirically test two alternative hypotheses: Deviation versus Convergence of M&A deal rationales between state-owned and private enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The data set is obtained by combining firm-level information from two sources, Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk). A recursive algorithm is developed to infer the ownership nature of the enterprises at the time the deal took place and then we double-check the identity of the global ultimate owner by visual inspection of all the available information. Motivations are analyzed through a case-by-case analysis and classified into several categories, thereby providing a taxonomy of rationales behind SOE M&As and discussing their differences and similarities relative to private firms. Findings More than 60% of the deals performed by SOEs as acquirers are driven by “shareholder-value maximization” motives, similarly to private enterprise acquirers. The other 40% of deals are almost equally spread among three rationales that specifically relate to the role of modern state capitalism in the economy. “Financial distress” motivation, which is the only one clearly deviating from the objectives of profit maximization typical of private ownership, is far less important than the others. Research limitations/implications The paper does not analyze in detail the case studies. Neither does it correlate the evidence with the quality of corporate governance or the quality of institutions in the country. This would be interesting in order to discover whether the alignment of objectives between public and private enterprises is enhanced by certain features of public sector management, as suggested by the OECD (2015) Guidelines. Practical implications The paper suggests some policy implications in terms of reforms of the corporate governance of the SOEs and accountability of their management against clearly stated public missions. It also calls for the need for citizens to be informed in a transparent way about the rationales of major M&A deals when a SOE is on the acquirer side, and the consistency of such rationales with the mission assigned by governments to the enterprises they own. Finally, it underlines that regulatory concerns raised in many countries by the rise of cross-border SOE M&As are in most of the cases unfounded. Originality/value Existing literature has mainly focused on private corporate M&A deals or has just disregarded the ownership status of the acquiring firm. This paper focuses on the motivations for SOE deals in order to elaborate a taxonomy of SOE deal rationales and to identify differences and similarities between private corporate firms.