Aflac Inc. may bid to acquire one of American International Group Inc.’s Japanese life insurance assets, Bloomberg News reported.

Aflac may attempt to purchase the Alico Japan life insurance unit, which AIG is putting up for sale, Aflac CEO Daniel Amos told Bloomberg Television. Aflac gets 70 percent of its sales in Japan.

Alston & Bird and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom have handled some corporate work for the Columbus, Ga. insurance company in recent years. Alston advised Aflac as a creditor seeking claims in the Parmalat bankruptcy case, according to Alston’s web site. Skadden partner Michael P. Rogan in 2006 advised Aflac on a securities offering in connection with a deferred compensation plan. Skadden counsel Nancy G. Rubin in Washington has advised Aflac on general corporate and securities matters, according to the law firm’s web site.

Aflac’s general counsel, Joey M. Loudermilk, has been with the company since 1983.

Aflac is most interested in Alico because of the similarity of the products they offer, Amos said. Alico is Japan's fifth-largest life insurer.

“Alico has been a competitor of ours for years, and we think Alico has a lot of potential in terms of an acquisition,” Amos said Oct. 10.

AIG said Oct. 3 it is seeking to sell life insurance and retirement businesses as it tries to repay an $85 billion loan extended by the U.S. government to keep the insurer from collapsing, Bloomberg said. In addition to Alico, AIG is selling its AIG Edison Life Insurance Co. and AIG Star Life Insurance Co. units in Japan.

With consumers finding it difficult to get credit and the nationwide average price of gasoline at more than $3.60 per gallon, auto dealerships across the country are shutting their doors. In what therefore should not be a surprise, the nation’s largest Hummer dealer just announced that it will close.

Towbin Hummer of Las Vegas will close tomorrow, The Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog reported. It’s at least the eighth Hummer dealer to close this year.

Deal Journal provides an example that makes it plain why consumers aren’t exactly lining up to buy Hummers these days. “With the national average for a price of gas resting at $3.66 a gallon, it costs $84 to fill up Hummer’s smallest model–the H3,” Deal Journal said. “At that price, an H3 owner in Las Vegas could fly to Los Angeles for a roundtrip weekend getaway for about as much as it would cost to drive the H3.”

Auto dealers of all stripes are closing, but especially those that sell U.S.-made cars. The number of new-car dealers in Georgia has declined from 623 in 2005 to 603 this year, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

There are at least four Hummer dealers in metro Atlanta, including Bridges Auto Group’s Hummer of Union City.

Dealers are being forced to offer more financial incentives on Hummers than any other car brand, and still they’re not selling, Deal Journal said. U.S. buyers received an average of $8,861 in various incentives for each Hummer sold, the blog said, citing Edmunds.com. In comparison, BMW is offering an average of $84 in incentives for each Mini it sells.

One Atlanta-area Hummer dealer, Lou Sobh Hummer in Duluth, is offering $10,000 off all 2007 versions of the Hummer H2 SUT, according to its Web site.

In one of his first acts as a Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner, former McKenna Long & Aldridge partner Luis Aguilar voted in favor of making it easier for U.S. investors to access information about foreign markets and companies.

The SEC voted to adopt a number of rules, including one to expand disclosures that foreign private firms provide to investors, Forbes reported. Another rule change would allow investors to use the Internet to access material documents belonging to a foreign private company.

“U.S. investors will have access to higher quality disclosures,” Aguilar said during an open SEC meeting, according to Forbes. Aguilar joined the SEC on July 31.

The commission voted unanimously in favor of the changes.

Alston & Bird has been retained by troubled mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc. To what extent Alston is working for IndyMac, however, is unclear.

IndyMac, which was shut down by the federal government earlier this month, hired Alston partner Dwight C. Smith III to advise the company on a number of issues, “including the transfer of its assets to the government,” according to British publication TheLawyer.com.

Smith, reached at his Washington office, declined to comment. Tony Wilbert, a senior vice president with Edelman who serves as an Alston spokesman, also declined to comment.

Alston’s Smith practices in the area of bank regulatory matters. Before joining Alston he was deputy chief counsel at the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision.

TheLawyer.com also said that Alston is “expected to have a role advising [IndyMac’s] directors and executives in relation to a current investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into possible mortgage fraud.”

IndyMac, a regulated thrift based in Pasadena, Calif., was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision on July 11 and placed into receivership with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The OTS transferred the assets and some liabilities of IndyMac Bank to a new institution called IndyMac Federal Bank.

IndyMac had been hammered by defaults on its mortgages; earlier this year, depositors pulled $1.3 billion from the bank during an 11-day period. IndyMac, which had been the largest savings-and-loan association in Southern California, was one of the largest bank failures in U.S. history.

FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair last week said that FDIC intends to sell all of IndyMac’s assets to a single buyer, Bloomberg News reported.

Alston has done work previously for IndyMac. Alston partner Michael L. Stevens in Atlanta in 2007 advised IndyMac on a securities sale.

The U.S. Senate on Friday approved McKenna Long & Aldridge partner Luis Aguilar to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said he was pleased that Senate Democrats were able to reach a deal with Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration to fill so many positions, Dow Jones reported. Reid said, “We are restoring Democratic representation to the SEC, where it had been absent.”

Aguilar, an Atlanta-based corporate attorney, fills a vacancy created when Roel C. Campos left the SEC last fall.

Delta Air Lines’ pilots union used in-house counsel for advice on its tentative agreement with Northwest Airlines’ pilots on merging their two unions, according to a union spokeswoman. Kelly Regus, the spokeswoman, declined to provide the names of the union’s in-house attorneys. Two attorneys listed in the State Bar of Georgia directory as Delta Air Line Pilots Association employees, Andrew Eric Brenner and Gordon Joseph Rose, did not return calls and emails seeking comment. Regus said that Brenner and Rose did not work on the agreement with Northwest.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz partners Stephanie J. Seligman and Lawrence S. Makow in New York have been lead corporate counsel to Delta Air Lines’ management on the Northwest acquisition. The two Wachtell Lipton lawyers also have been trying to nudge the Delta pilots and Northwest pilots toward reaching a deal on merging their unions, The Am Law Daily blog reported Thursday.

In April Delta agreed to acquire Northwest for $3.63 billion. As part of the deal, Delta gave its pilots an equity stake in the new company. No such deal was consummated with Northwest's pilots. Although the Delta and Northwest pilots had not agreed on how to merge their seniority lists in April, Delta and Northwest executives decided to proceed with their merger anyway.

The tentative joint contract with Delta and Northwest pilots announced this week clears the way for relatively smoother sailing if the two airlines receive regulatory clearance for their merger later this year.

McKenna Long & Aldridge partner Luis Aguilar, a nominee to the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he supports adding regulations and staff to the federal agency to oversee investment banks, Reuters reported.

According to testimony submitted in response to questions from U.S. senators, Aguilar said he’d support additional rules for firms like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, if needed, to protect investors and promote market stability. Investment banking supervision has been scrutinized since Bear Stearns nearly collapsed when its liquidity dried up in March.

Aguilar also said the SEC should consider working with Congress to review the regulatory framework as there appears to be no regulatory agency with explicit statutory authority over investment banks.

Aguilar, a corporate, securities, international and investment advisors partner in Atlanta, was nominated by President Bush in March to fill two Democratic slots on the SEC.

Kilpatrick Stockton partner Bill Boice advised North Carolina software maker Red Hat Inc. on settling a patent infringement lawsuit, CNet.com reported June 11.

FireStar Software of Boxborough, Mass. had sued Red Hat for infringing their patents for a Java mapping tool. Red Hat acquired the Java software tool when it purchased the company JBoss in 2006.

In the settlement all software distributed under Red Hat’s brands and predecessor versions are covered. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed.

Boice, who’s based in Atlanta, leads KilStock’s patent litigation team. Red Hat, of Raleigh, N.C., makes software for the Linux open-source computer operating system.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will seek more than $100 million in fines and restitution against Atlanta-based CompuCredit Corp. and affiliate banks, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Kirkland & Ellis partner Pat A. Cipollone in Washington is advising CompuCredit on the matter, said FTC spokesman Frank Dorman.

CompuCredit said in a May 7 regulatory filing that it was in discussions with both the FTC and FDIC, the newspaper said. CompuCredit said in the regulatory filing that the agencies, starting in 2006, began investigating its "policies, practices and procedures used in connection with our credit card originating financial institution relationships. ... we expect to enter into settlement agreements with the FDIC and FTC limiting certain marketing, servicing and collection practices ... and requiring us to credit various fees to affected customers."

On Tuesday, the FTC said in a news release that it and the FDIC will charge an unnamed company with "using deceptive marketing practices and abusive debt collection tactics affecting consumers in the subprime market.” The Wall Street Journal said the charges will be issued against CompuCredit and the banks that issue CompuCredit's credit cards.

The FTC plans to file a suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, charging credit-card-marketing and debt-collection companies with using deceptive practices aimed at borrowers with poor credit, the WSJ said. The FDIC plans to file administrative charges against CompuCredit.

On Tuesday, CompuCredit said that the charges it anticipates the agencies to file are "untrue and without merit."

"The credit card programs at issue complied with applicable laws and regulations," CompuCredit said in a statement. "In fact, the FDIC repeatedly determined over the years now at issue that the marketing materials fully disclosed fees and terms in compliance with consumer protection laws."

In 2006, CompuCredit and Synovus Financial Corp.'s Columbus Bank & Trust, which has issued CompuCredit’s cards, reached an agreement with former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to pay $11 million in restitution to New York customers based on deceptive practices.

CompuCredit markets credit cards, under the brands Aspire and Emerge, to consumers with poor credit histories.

Two Alston & Bird attorneys in New York advised a special committee formed by Cablevision Systems Corp. in response to a series of options-backdating lawsuits, The American Lawyer’s Am Law Daily blog reported, citing Newsday. Alston partner Nelson A. Boxer and associate Tiffany A. Buxton counseled a special litigation committee of Cablevision’s board. Cablevision, a Bethpage, N.Y., operator of cable-TV systems and the owner of Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks, agreed to pay $34.4 million to company shareholders to settle the suits. More than 20 law firms were involved in representing individual plaintiffs and defendants in the case. Grant & Eisenhofer of Wilmington, Del., represented the lead plaintiffs. Debevoise & Plimpton represented Cablevision Chairman Charles F. Dolan and his son, chief executive James L. Dolan.