Houston’s SCI Will Buy Pierce Brothers : Acquisitions: The North Hollywood-based funeral-home operator tentatively agrees to the takeover. Antitrust laws must first be considered.

Pierce Brothers, the Los Angeles area’s largest chain of mortuaries, has tentatively agreed to be acquired by the biggest funeral-home operator in the nation, Service Corp. International (SCI). Terms were not disclosed pending a definitive merger pact between the companies.

Pierce Brothers, based in North Hollywood, owns and operates 60 funeral homes, nine cemeteries and 11 other funeral-related businesses, all in California and Florida. It also operates three other cemeteries under contract. In the five-county area surrounding Los Angeles, Pierce Brothers has 40 mortuaries and seven cemeteries.

“We’re in the business of buying funeral homes and cemeteries,” and Pierce Brothers “fits precisely into our growth plans,” SCI spokesman Bill Barrett said.

The company--founded in 1902 by brothers Edward, William, Fred and Robert Pierce--has been owned for the past three decades by one of the nation’s wealthiest men, Joseph L. Allbritton, a Washington businessman who also has interests in broadcasting, banking and publishing.

Thomas H. Johnson, Pierce Brothers president, said neither he nor Allbritton had any immediate comment on why Allbritton was ready to sell the chain. The financial results of Pierce Brothers and Allbritton’s other holdings also are not publicly disclosed.

Houston-based SCI has 542 funeral homes and 148 cemeteries in the United States and Canada. The publicly held concern also owns a host of related businesses such as flower shops and limousine services, and its revenue last year totaled $563.2 million. The company also provides financing to other operators in the funeral industry.

SCI already operates 73 mortuaries and 20 cemeteries in California, most of them in Southern California. Its national cemetery operations have been headquartered in San Diego for many years.

SCI has made several acquisitions in recent months, and the funeral-home industry is seen as ripe for further consolidation. It’s a fragmented industry that consists of about 22,000 mortuaries nationwide, many of which are small, family owned businesses.

Many of those small mortuaries, squeezed by rising overhead costs and customers’ increasing desire for lower-cost services such as cremations, have been selling out to larger chains. Pierce Brothers itself used acquisitions to rapidly expand in the 1980s.

Asked whether the Pierce Brothers deal might raise antitrust problems in California, SCI’s Barrett said, “I haven’t heard any concerns from this side about that.”

Because of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act of 1978, SCI will have to file details of its takeover offer with the Federal Trade Commission so that the agency can evaluate the bid on antitrust grounds.