In recent years there has been an increase in the number of academic publications on contemporary state-owned enteprises (SOEs)[1] and their differences from, and similarities to, private firms. The growing attention is motivated not only by the expanding size of SOEs[2], but also by significant changing dynamics that have shaped their contemporary features and role. In fact, contemporary SOEs have been strongly reorganized in terms of governance rules, regulatory framework, business re-engineering, accountability and transparency standards, and they have become more mixed enterprises, with enhanced competitive capabilities and facing similar issues and challenges to those faced by private enterprises (Cuervo-Cazurra et al. 2014; Florio 2014; Bruton et al. 2015; Lebedev et al. 2015; Musacchio et al. 2015; He et al. 2016; Peng et al. 2016). In addition, contemporary SOEs more and more frequently play a relevant function in promoting research and innovation, in fostering long-term and/or high-risk capital-intensive projects (Millward 2011; De Olloqui 2013; Eslava and Freixas 2016), and in channeling funds to long-term societal challenges (Mazzuccato and Penna 2016). Among recent publications, an increasing number of papers are focusing on M&A (Chen and Young 2010; Wu and Xie 2010; Lebedev et al. 2015; Reddy et al. 2016; Bacchiocchi et al. 2017; Clò et al. 2017; Del Bo et al. 2017; Karolyi and Liao 2017; Xie et al. 2017). The reason for such a specific interest in this one important aspect of the new activisim of SOEs is the role they are playing in the Market for Corporate Control (MCC), where they are acquirers in a significant number of deals – both domestic and cross-border – and for a significant amount of assets. In the last decade the cumulative value of the target assets purchased by SOEs was reported to be no less than 690 billion euros, which is 30% of the total assets of the targets traded in the M&A arena (Clò et al. 2015). In the same period, in the financial industry, more than 10% of M&A deals involved state-owned banks as acquirers (Bacchiocchi et al. 2017). Governments also acquire assets in the MCC through Sovereign Wealth Funds, which are the fastest growing class of asset owners since 2000, with a reported size of around 5 trillion dollars, and which regularly invest in listed and unlisted targets in developed and emerging markets (Bortolotti et al. 2015). The goal of our paper is to contribute to this recent field of finance literature with a detailed analysis of the main reported rationales behind a sample of SOE-led M&As over the last decade. Specifically, we analyze the extent to which recent changes that are reshaping the overall activity of contemporary SOEs are also affecting their strategic investment choices and behaviors in the MCC, and whether acquirer motivations are more aligned with the rationales traditionally identified in the empirical literature for private firms. Why is a firm that is ultimately owned by a government willing to acquire another state-owned or privateowned enterprise? Is there any similarity to the rationales underlying private-owned enterprise deals? Or are they motivated by the need to reach strategic social or welfare goals, particularly after the Great Recession?