Loewen Group

Remember MTBE, the carcinogenic gasoline additive that has been leaking into the ground water in Santa Monica, Lake Tahoe and 10,000 wells throughout California? Did you think the problem was under control after Gov. Gray Davis ordered a phaseout of the chemical by 2002? Better think again. Davis is merely the highest elected official of the state. What does he know? Such matters have been turned over to corporations these days, who know better. In particular, Methanex Corp.

Buying a casket is grave business, but a pair of north-central Washington entrepreneurs are trying to make it a little less solemn and a lot less expensive. In December, Pat Kichler and George Otto opened The Casket Store, a brightly lighted, no-frills retail store for, quite obviously, caskets. A dozen models are on display, ranging from a basic $725 denim-covered fiberboard casket to a $2,650 design called the Pieta Poplar with scenes of the Last Supper depicted on the hardware.

Investors who were seeking $1.75 million in compensatory damages against Goldman Sachs Group and one of its stock analysts have been awarded a fraction of what they sought, a possible setback to investors who might expect large awards in the growing number of cases against analysts.

The next time somebody asks you to name a business professor who has actually succeeded as an investor, you can mention Samuel Stewart. Stewart runs the Wasatch Advisors group of funds in Salt Lake City and is one of the relatively few finance professors to make a name for himself as a mutual fund manager. His Wasatch Aggressive Equity Fund, the company's flagship, has beaten the broad stock market over the last five years and enjoys an above-average, four-star rating from Morningstar Inc.

The business of burial, long the exclusive province of family-owned funeral homes, is undergoing a quiet revolution in the United States with the acquisition of hundreds of homes and cemeteries by chain operators. * And the movement is quickly spreading overseas, where funeral services traditionally cost a fraction of those in the U.S. Service Corp.

The president of one of the nation's largest African American denominations was found guilty Saturday of racketeering, convicted of bilking more than $4 million from companies seeking to sell products to the group's members. The Rev. Henry Lyons, 57, of the National Baptist Convention USA was also found guilty of two counts of grand theft in connection with $244,000 given to him from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith to rebuild burned-out black churches throughout the South.

The funeral industry's continued good health once seemed as inevitable as, well, death itself. The $14-billion industry's three biggest chains racked up market-beating profits in the 1990s, acquiring almost 50% of Southland funeral homes and about 13% of U.S. mortuaries overall. Investors sent their stock prices soaring, enticed by predictions of a so-called death boom in about a decade when baby boomers start passing away.

Blue chips bolted into record territory Monday as Wall Street bet that the Federal Reserve Board will lower interest rates this week. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 33.23 points at 5,304.98, adding to its 54.92-point gain of Friday. The index has set four milestones so far this year. The Standard & Poor's composite index of 500 stocks, the New York Stock Exchange composite and the Wilshire Associates equity index also closed at new highs.

A string of bad-loan warnings this summer from banks such as Union Bank of California, Imperial Bancorp and Wachovia Corp. sent Wall Street investors running for cover. Those concerns helped drive the Standard & Poor's bank stock composite index down more than 20% from its early-June high. But by the time second-quarter earnings were all announced, fears that other major banks would suffer similar credit problems failed to materialize.

There are only so many funerals in a town of 2,874 people. So when Bobby Brownfield built an expansive new mortuary in a field by the Dairy Mart and lavished it with cut-glass doors, antiques in its parlors and concrete urns atop the front gate, folks here clucked a little. "I just teased him," recalled Ellice Kidd, an 87-year-old retired contractor who'd prepaid Brownfield for his future embalming and burial. "I said, 'You're spending my money, aren't you?'