This article examines why and how states use the legal and organisational construction of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) to deal with environmental and social crises. In 1973, in response to a drastic collapse in the world’s largest fishery, the Peruvian state nationalised its anchoveta fishing fleet and factories while hastily creating Pesca Perú, an SOE given a monopoly on industrial catch and exploitation of the resource. Pesca Perú struggled with a dual mandate and governments with widely varying ideas of how the Peruvian economy should be organised. In the early 1980s the enterprise lost its production monopoly due as much to environmental factors as to political decisions. It was eventually privatised in the 1990s. While generally regarded as a failed business, Pesca Perú was a useful tool for a state with limited resources to pursue governance and developmental objectives.