Fisher Funeral Home sold to Texas company|[02/06/07]
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, February 6, 2007
A deal by Canadian corporation Alderwoods Group to sell 600 of its American funeral homes has been closed and includes Frank J. Fisher Funeral Home of Vicksburg.
The sale has been in process more than a year and Fisher is one of 23 Mississippi funeral homes in the $1.2 billion purchase by Houston, Texas-based Service Corp. International, known by the initials SCI.
“We’re proud to be with SCI. We’re looking forward to working for them,” said funeral home manager Billy Dumas of Fisher.
He said there will be no changes at the funeral home on Cherry Street, which was owned by two families in succession before being sold to Alderwoods.
The deal involves 600 funeral home locations owned by Alderwoods, said Greg Bolton, an SCI spokesman. SCI now owns more than 2,000 funeral homes in 46 states, he said.
The Federal Trade Commission approved the acquisition subject to the SCI’s immediately selling 40 funeral homes – Newton and Meridian locations among them – and 15 cemeteries in 41 markets across the United States.
The FTC ruled those markets would be noncompetitive because SCI would have dominant market and pricing control.
Fisher Funeral Home began with the purchase of an existing funeral home by Frank J. Fisher. Family members later sold to Charles Riles who operated the funeral home as Fisher and Fisher-Riles until selling to Alderwoods, which later filed bankruptcy.
Riles and his wife, Cecelia, now own Riles Funeral Home, which is not associated with Alderwoods or SCI. Glenwood, Jefferson, Robbins, Lakeview, Williams and Dillon-Chisley, which also serve Vicksburg, are also family-owned.
Mississippi has 442 funeral homes, four commercial mortuaries and 13 crematories, according to the state Board of Funeral Services, which handles the licensing process for the state’s funeral industry.