|
Deal brings new life to death
|
 |
August 6, 1998: 10:27 a.m. ET
Funeral director Service Corp. buys Equity Corp. in $578M undertaking
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Can a stock swap that's dead-on-arrival breathe new life into the merging couple?
That's a grave question, but one for which Service Corp. International, the world's largest funeral and cemetery company, has a ready answer. It agreed Thursday to acquire rival burial-and-embalming behemoth Equity Corp. International in a combination valued at nearly $580 million.
Service Corp., a post-mortem powerhouse that owns about 3,900 funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums in 18 countries, agreed to a stock-for-stock transaction in which Equity shareholders will receive $27 a share in Service Corp. stock. That makes the deal worth $577.8 million, based on Equity's 21.4 million outstanding shares.
Equity Corp., the nation's fourth-largest publicly traded "death care" company, owns and operates 326 funeral homes and 81 cemeteries in 35 states and one Canadian province.
The combined entity will dominate the death market, generating estimated annual revenues of around $3 billion, the companies said. It will have operations throughout metropolitan and rural North America comprised of nearly 3,600 funeral homes, 500 cemeteries and 175 crematoriums.
The deal is planned as a pooling of interests and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 1998, subject to regulatory approval and vote by Equity shareholders.
Shares of Service Corp. eased 11/16 to 33-5/16 in early trade Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange; Equity Corp. stock was up 1-7/8 at 24. 
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
