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None of the tactics employed by the consolidators is illegal, although Arizona, where SCI has a powerful presence, is contemplating a law that would require the companies to disclose their ownership to consumers. "I can't point to SCI and Loewen and say they're doing anything wrong," says David Walkinshaw, a third-generation funeral director who owns the Saville Funeral Home in Arlington, Massachusetts. "They're doing things the way major corporations do in every other area of our economy."
But such tactics did not sit well in Biloxi.
DEATH PAYS
Jeremiah O'Keefe is at his desk in the headquarters of Gulf National Insurance Co., a key part of the O'Keefe family's Biloxi empire. Gulf National sells "pre-need" funeral insurance, which lets forward-thinking souls pay in current dollars for funerals that are bound to be more costly down the road. Funerals have always been a family affair for the O'Keefes. As a teenager, O'Keefe helped out with embalmings done in the homes of the deceased, to which he and the embalmer brought large suitcases and big jugs for catching--well, for helping the newly departed complete their journeys in as fresh a state as possible.
What especially galled O'Keefe about Loewen's moving into the area was that after it acquired Riemann, it promptly bought the Wright & Ferguson Funeral Home in Jackson, Mississippi, which had previously sold only O'Keefe's brand of pre-need insurance. Suddenly, however, the Riemanns began selling their own brand through the new acquisition. O'Keefe took his protest directly to Ray Loewen.
Like O'Keefe, Loewen grew up in the funeral industry. He helped transport bodies to and from his father's Manitoba funeral home. "It was," he would later testify, "a great way to grow up in a small country town." He launched the Loewen Group in 1985. Last year, just a decade later, the company had nearly $600 million in revenue, more than 90% of it from its U.S. operations.
O'Keefe soon found himself on English Bay aboard Ray Loewen's yacht, the company's secret weapon in the subtle art of funeral-home acquisition. Traditionally, the funeral industry has been dominated by family-run operations. Even now consolidators own only about 10% of America's 23,000 funeral homes, although these tend to be prime properties in key markets and account for an estimated 20% of the country's funerals. Wooing the owners often involves a good deal of soft salesmanship--chats over coffee and impromptu visits to talk about "succession planning," the industry's euphemism for transferring ownership. Loewen then flies prospects up to Vancouver, where Ray Loewen dazzles them with evening cruises and salmon barbecues. Says a former executive: "Going salmon fishing south of Alaska is a wonderful experience. And all other things being the same, it makes a difference."