Service Corporation International is a provider of American funeral goods and services, as well as funeral properties and services. It's headquartered in Neartown, Houston, Texas. SCI operates more than 1500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries in 43 states, eight Canadian provinces, and Puerto Rico.
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Company history
Robert L. Waltrip, a licensed funeral director who grew up in his family funeral business, founded the company in 1962. SCI started as a small network of funeral and funeral homes in the Houston area.
When SCI grew overseas, the company continued to acquire business in North America - a market that, in the late 1990s, became very competitive among companies that wanted to buy a death care business. SCI, Alderwoods Group and Stewart Enterprises emerged from this period as the three largest companies in the industry. As of December 31, 1999, SCI owns and operates 3,823 burial sites, 525 graves, 198 cremations and two insurance operations located in 20 countries on five continents.
In 1999, SCI also introduced the Dignity Memorial, North America's first continental death care and care product brand. By bringing together funeral and funeral homes under one brand name, SCI believes it can build recognizable and communicative brand values.
In 2000, poor market conditions forced SCI to reevaluate operations. Despite the once promising overseas operations, nearly 70 percent of SCI revenue is generated by operations in the United States and Canada. The company decided to divest many offshore businesses, alongside many funeral homes and funerals in North America. The British arm now operates as Dignity plc.
Between 2002 and 2006, SCI reduced its net debt (total debt minus cash) by more than $ 1.0 billion, improved operating cash flow, and simplified field management organizations to improve efficiency, performance and accountability. It also alters business and sales processes, tightens internal controls following protocols, strengthens corporate governance standards, and builds new training and development systems. For its shareholders, SCI returned value of more than $ 335 million in share repurchases, and it continued routine quarterly dividend payments in early 2005, the first since 1999.
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Recent acquisitions
In 2006, SCI merged with Alderwoods Group, its closest competitor in terms of size. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blocked the merger, citing concerns over consumer choice. After agreeing to divest the funeral home and burial site in some markets and terminate the license agreement with other funeral homes, the FTC allows the merger to continue. In 2007, Alderwoods location and operation integration was completed.
In 2009, SCI made an offer to buy Keystone North America for $ 208 million. Purchases completed in 2010 and added about 200 locations.
In May 2013, SCI signed a $ 1.4 billion deal to buy Stewart Enterprises, the second-largest maintenance company. In December 2013, the FTC imposes requirements on acquisitions, requiring both companies to sell 53 funerary homes and 38 graves in 59 local markets, and require the joint company to be subject to a ten-year period in which the FTC will review efforts by the company to acquire funeral assets or funeral in the local market.
Brand
SCI operates the following brands in the United States and Canada:
- Dignity Memorial: Founded in 1999, provides services in 41 states and seven provinces in Canada.
- Dignity Planning: Dignity Planning provides funeral planning and arrangements through the Dignity Memorial North America location.
- Advantage: Advantage provides basic burial services and products.
- Funeraria del Angel: Funeraria del Angel provides special services for Hispanic customers.
- The Memorial Plan: The Memorial Plan currently manages six funeral homes and five graves in South Florida.
- National Cremation Society: Founded in 1972, the National Cremation Society is the oldest and largest cremation service in the United States.
- The Neptune Society: In June 2011, SCI announced the acquisition of a 70% interest in Neptune Society, a national cremation service company established in 1973.
Business model
SCI's funeral home network is almost entirely made up of existing businesses that the company acquires. SCI tends to buy successful, well-established, and well-known funeral homes in their communities. SCI then retains the original name of the funeral home, often along with former owners who are kept as management. A typical funeral home owned by SCI will not contain advertisements or logos for SCI, with the exception of, perhaps, from employee pins on staff collars. Consequently, most North American consumers are not familiar with the company itself. In contrast, SCI strongly emphasizes their Dignity Memorial brand. The "Dignity" logo can be seen in all SCI funeral and funeral homes, staff, signboards, documents, vehicles, etc.
Important properties
- Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California, the world's largest one-site operation cemetery of 2,500 acres (10 km 2 ).
- Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan, New York City.
- Westwood Village Memorial Park in Westwood, Los Angeles, California
- Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Los Angeles
- Riverside Memorial Chapel, Manhattan, New York City.
- The Memorial of the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas
- Caballero Rivero Woodlawn Park North Cemetery and Mausoleum
Controversy
Cost
Writing in the October 24, 2013 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, journalist Paul M. Barrett found, despite a lower overhead, SCI has a higher price than an independent morgue operators. Barrett cites "data collected" by the "waitress" funeral planning service "" The Everest Funeral Cemetery, which found that for "traditional funerals, the SCI charges an average of $ 6,256 (excluding caskets and funeral plots), 42 percent more than independent. "In response, the SCI showed" very positive responses "to customer surveys, under market wages paid to staff and management, and stated they provided" top marks "at various funeral pricing points.
Texas
In the late 1990s, SCI was involved in a controversy involving alleged violations of Texas State embalming law. The trial process takes a political view because of the friendship of Robert Waltrip with the family of governor George W. Bush and Waltrip campaign contributions to various members of the Bush family.
Called "Funeralgate" or "Formaldegate" in the media, the controversy was widely publicized when Eliza May, director of the Texas Funeral Services Commission (TFSC), was fired while investigating SCI. It may be suspected in a civil lawsuit that he was fired for refusing to stop his investigation despite pressure to do so from Governor Bush.
The lawyer may ask President Bush to testify at the hearing, but Texas Judge John K. Dietz dismissed the court order on the grounds that the then governor was in no position to have enough special information to ask for his involvement.
The lawsuit was completed in 2001 for more than $ 200,000. SCI and the state of Texas were asked to jointly pay the decision. On January 23, 2004, TFSC fined an additional SCI of $ 21,000 for administrative punishments.
Florida
In 2001, it was reported that Memorial Gardens funeral workers near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida has surpassed the grave, so the corpses are buried in the wrong place, separating the husband from the wife; vault cracks open by backhoe; the corpses were dug, with bones, skulls and sheaths thrown into the nearby forest; body stacked on top of each other; and remnants were moved without informing the family.
The accusations are especially worrisome for the more religious religious keepers of the Judaism, The Miami Herald report. Traditional Jewish law requires the body to be buried intact and forbid disturbing the dead. SCI reached a $ 14 million deal with the Florida attorney general's office in 2003 that required it to fix the plot and reorganize the grave to make sure all the graves were properly marked and the land could hold all the plots sold. SCI also completed a separate class action suit on behalf of 350 families for $ 100 million.
Virginia
On April 26, 2007, The Washington Post reported that the SCI funeral in Alexandria, Virginia, had improperly buried the remnants of the reborn princess of Nsombi Hale in a too shallow grave (in grave about 8 hours). inch/20 cm). Nsombi Hale filed a lawsuit against SCI.
After an internal investigation by SCI, a lawyer who worked for SCI denied the allegations against the company in a letter to the Virginia funeral regulator, and a few days later, the Post reported that Robert Ranghelli, one of SCI's employees who had corroborated the initial submission report incorrect corpses, fired for "exercising their first amendment rights/talking to the media" after administrative leave for several months after the initial report in the newspaper.
On April 5, 2009, The Washington Post reported that the National Funeral Home, a facility owned by SCI in the Falls Church area of ​​Fairfax County, Virginia, which also acts as a central embalming and dressing center for embalming and body preparations for another SCI-owned operation (Arlington Funeral Home, Danzansky-Goldberg Memorial Chapel and Demaine Funeral Home), are storing naked bodies in various stages of decay under conditions described as "disgusting, degrading and humiliating". The story goes on to report that as many as 200 bodies were kept on "emergency gorgey in the garage" and "at least half a dozen veterans destined for holy land at Arlington National Cemetery abandoned in their coffins on a garage rack." The Post reports that the documentation describing this condition has been reported to the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers.
A few days later, the Post reported that a family member of a dead Army veteran whose body was stored in a garage that was not recycled at National Funeral Home asked the County Fairfax County Prosecutor to investigate the National action and its parent company, SCI, as a crime.
The Post further reports that the retired family of US Army Colonel Andrew DeGraff filed a lawsuit in Fairfax County alleging that SCI was wrong in handling DeGraff's remains. According to the article, a SCI spokesman said that the company is conducting an internal investigation.
California
On September 14, 2009, a class action lawsuit filed against SCI and Eden Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery run by SCI in Mission Hills, alleges that they destroyed the grave to make room for new places.
The Los Angeles Times reported that state officials found no evidence of mass grave defects. Russ Heimerich, spokesman for the State Consumer Affairs Department, said, "We have not seen any evidence of the kind of large-scale blasphemy alleged... The type of activity they allege is not easily hidden, especially on a deliberate large scale." Plaintiffs' lawyers rejected investigative findings country. The lawsuit continues until the end of 2009.
Michael Avenatti, plaintiff's lawyer, said more than 800 families have joined the class action lawsuit. Avenatti claimed the country's investigations were bad, saying, "Investigators from the state were told by various park guards a year ago that they have been repeatedly told to throw bones, but for some reason, the state is not enough to follow through."
SCI rejects all allegations. After the lawsuit was filed, the Consumer Affairs Department reviewed five to six years of annual funeral check records and found no indication that the grave had been disturbed. According to the Los Angeles Times article, "The agency also asked dozens of families who contacted officials to look for signs of disturbance - tombstones shifted or cracked or anything that looked different from previous visits - and did not receive any callback, he said, ". In January 2012, a lawsuit against Eden Memorial Park was confirmed as a valid class act at the Los Angeles Superior Court, with a hearing scheduled to begin in May 2012.
In February 2014, a settlement of $ 80 million was reached in this case.
Massachusetts
In 2010, SCI's Stanetsky Chapel, a Jewish cemetery in Brookline, MA, was indicted by the State Registry Board with serious violations of state laws and regulations in connection with an incident in which a woman was buried in the wrong cemetery, then disinterred without legal permission. obtained and re-buried in the right grave with the female family not informed of errors and corrective procedures. As a result, in December 2011, the State Council announced Approval Agreement and issued the largest fines in its history, $ 18,000, against Stanetsky and SCI, and suspended the license from Stanetsky's general manager for one year. Other staff members involved in the incident were subject to punishment actions ranging from additional professional training to licensing revocation. This incident received widespread local media coverage. Board actions are also published on the Council's website.
In the case first reported on April 7, 2005, Boston Globe reported J.S. Waterman & amp; Children, also owned by SCI, were found by the Council to inadvertently cremate the body of a deceased baby in 2003. The baby's body appeared to be placed in a gurney holding an adult female body scheduled for cremation. As a result of the civil suit brought by the infant family, Waterman was ordered to pay $ 325,000 parent, with a pending legal claim that the morgue violates a state consumer protection law that could double the damage, Boston Globe
References
External links
- Official website
- NYSE Group, Inc & gt; Registered Securities
- Wrightreports - Snapshot Company Profile Wright Investor Services
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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