Does art have a place in business?

Japanese ink maker sells off Monet, Renoir paintings as activists circle

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FACING more pressure from activist investors to increase returns, one Japanese company has turned to its art holdings, raising more than $100 million selling paintings by the likes of Monet and Renoir.

DIC Corp., an ink and resin maker, has a well-known collection of art, and some of the works are very valuable. It sold Claude Monet’s 1907 masterpiece Nymphéas, for about $45.5 million at a Christie’s auction on Nov. 17 in New York. Christie’s estimated earlier that it could sell for $40 million to $60 million.

DIC also auctioned seven more paintings including works by Marc Chagall and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, with total sales coming to about $106 million, according to Christie’s.

The auction followed calls from activist investor Oasis Management Co. to sell off DIC’s collection, saying that paintings aren’t part of the firm’s core business and they've weighed on its stock performance.

Many Japanese companies have been selling physical assets on their balance sheet like real estate to generate profits to bolster their income statements. DIC’s sale of its art collection may do the same.