A group of Atlanta attorneys from Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker advised a struggling Florida bank on its acquisition by a private equity group after it was shut down by federal regulators.

In the deal, BankUnited Financial Corp. of Coral Gables, Fla., was acquired by a consortium of private equity funds, including WL Ross & Co., Carlyle Investment Management LLC, Blackstone Capital Partners and Centerbridge Capital Partners LP. Former North Fork Bancorp Chief Executive Officer John Kanas was also an investor and will become BankUnited’s new CEO.

The WL Ross/Kanas group beat out a competing offer by Goldman, Sachs & Co. and TD Bank, according to newsletter The Deal.

BankUnited had assets of $12.8 billion and deposits of $8.6 billion as of May 2. BankUnited’s failure will cost the FDIC about $4.9 billion.

The reorganized BankUnited will retain its status as the largest banking institution with a Florida headquarters, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It operates 86 branches primarily in south Florida.

Paul Hastings partner Walter Jospin was lead adviser to BankUnited’s board of directors. The Paul Hastings group was also regulatory and bankruptcy counsel to BankUnited’s holding company. Paul Hastings banking partner John Douglas and corporate partner Erik Belenky in Atlanta, and bankruptcy partner Richard Chesley in Chicago worked with Jospin.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom partners David Ingles and William Rubenstein in New York and William Sweet in Washington advised Kanas and WL Ross, Carlyle, Blackstone and Centerbridge. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett also advised Blackstone, Carlyle and Centerbridge. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz also advised WL Ross.

The BankUnited deal is the second acquisition of a bank by private equity investors this year. Banks have been failing in the U.S. at a rapid pace; BankUnited is the 34^th  bank insured by the FDIC to be closed this year.

A tornado struck Americus in southwest Georgia on Mar. 7, 2007, killing two people, snapping in half a Georgia Public Television antenna tower and leveling cars and buildings.

Also among the wreckage was Sumter Regional Hospital, whose primary building was destroyed. Since then, the hospital has been operating out of modular buildings, offering urgent care and basic outpatient services.

The Americus and Sumter County Hospital Authority has also made plans to rebuild the hospital. That included hiring a Chicago investment bank to find a financial partner to either acquire the hospital or provide some other source of financing.

In October the Americus hospital authority reached a series of agreements, with the operator of Albany’s largest hospital, Phoebe Putney Health System Inc., to rebuild the hospital. Albany is located about 35 miles south of Americus.

Among the various deals reached, Phoebe Putney signed a 40-year lease and transfer agreement, under which it will manage Sumter Regional Hospital. Phoebe Putney also agreed to spend at least $25 million of its own money to rebuild the hospital.

Smith Moore Leatherwood partners Barry Herrin and Toby Watt in Atlanta are co-lead counsel to Sumter Regional Hospital and the hospital authority. Robert Baudino and Ken Hodges of the Baudino Law Group are advising Phoebe Putney; Baudino is based in Des Moines, Iowa, and Hodges is based in Atlanta. Hodges, by the way, is also running for the office of attorney general of Georgia. He is a former Dougherty County district attorney.

Also involved with the transaction are Phoebe Putney general counsel Tommy Chambless and Judge Michael Fennessy, counsel for the Americus and Sumter County Hospital Authority.

The total cost of rebuilding Sumter Regional Hospital has been estimated at about $125 million, Watt said. Phoebe Putney’s funds will be combined with insurance proceeds and future reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The parties expect the deal to close on July 1, pending approval from the Georgia Department of Law, pursuant to the Georgia Hospital Acquisition Act. Russ Willard, a spokesman for the department, said the department has not hired outside private attorneys to review the agreement. Staff attorney Shereen Walls is handling the review for the attorney general's office.

One reason the Americus hospital authority selected Phoebe Putney’s offer, which was one among several the authority received, was because of the Albany hospital’s financial strength, Watt said. Because FEMA won’t reimburse Phoebe Putney and Sumter Regional Hospital for rebuilding costs until after the money has been spent, the selected financial partner needed to have the financial capacity to withstand an extended period of time when the hospital would be waiting for FEMA reimbursement.

Friend, Hudak & Harris partner Charlie Hudak in Atlanta is slated to serve as regulatory co-counsel to Charter Communications Inc. on the cable TV giant’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

St. Louis-based Charter is seeking approval to pay Hudak and his firm $5,891,184 for a period spanning January 2008 through December 2010, based on a rate of $272.74 for about 21,600 hours, according to a court filing. Friend, Hudak & Harris has been advising Charter since 2003, according to the filing.

Hudak could not be immediately reached for comment.

Judge James M. Peck of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York had not approved Charter’s application to employ Hudak as of Thursday afternoon.

Kirkland & Ellis is lead debtor counsel to Charter.

According to a court document, Friend, Hudak & Harris advises telecommunications companies on numerous matters, including contracts and transactions, regulatory advocacy, federal and state telecommunications certification and regulatory compliance and litigation and dispute resolution

Friend, Hudak & Harris listed several other clients in its bankruptcy court application. Those clients include Adelphia Communications, Comcast, Delta Air Lines and Time Warner Cable.

China rejected Coca-Cola Co.’s proposed $2.3 billion acquisition of China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd., saying it would be “negative for competition” in the Chinese beverage market, Bloomberg News reported.

Coke’s acquisition agreement was one of the first major tests of China’s recently-adopted antitrust law, the Am Law Daily blog said. China's Anti-Monopoly Law came into affect in August 2008.

If the deal had gone through, Coca-Cola might have used its “dominant position” to drive up prices and limit competition, Bloomberg reported, citing the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

Coca-Cola can appeal the decision, but won’t, Bloomberg said.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which has advised Coca-Cola on numerous recent corporate matters, had been counsel to the Atlanta beverage giant on the Chinese deal. Skadden partners Nicholas Norris in Hong Kong and Gregory Miao in Shanghai were lead advisers.

Some corporate attorneys had speculated in September that the Chinese government would approve the Coke deal because of the goodwill Coca-Cola had engendered in the country through its sponsorship of the Beijing Olympics and other factors.

Some unexpected obstacles got in the way, but after a year-long regulatory review, Troutman Sanders partner Terry C. Bridges was able to help close a deal on behalf of a New Mexico utility company.

Bridges’ client, PNM Resources Inc., on Jan. 30 closed on the $640 million sale of its natural gas operations in New Mexico to Continental Energy Systems LLC. Continental is owned by funds controlled by New York private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg LLC. Following its purchase of PNM Resources’ natural gas assets, Continental renamed the business New Mexico Gas Co.

When the deal was first announced in January 2008, the companies expected the deal to close in December, pending approval by the New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission. While the actual closing was only slightly delayed, the closing process presented some unforeseen challenges, according to Bridges.

For one, there were interested parties that didn’t like elements of the deal. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) filed a motion with the New Mexico PRC to block the deal, saying they objected to PNM Resources’ plan to retain all of the financial gain from the sale of the assets. The NNSA wanted PNM Resources to share the financial gain with the utility’s ratepayers.

However, the New Mexico PRC ultimately ruled against the NNSA and allowed PNM Resources to book the entire gain, Bridges said. As part of that agreement, Continental agreed to freeze base rates for three years.

Later, a New Mexico municipality filed an objection to the sale. The city wanted a right-of-first-refusal to purchase a gas pipeline that runs through its city limits, if the gas line was ever again put up for sale. But once again, the New Mexico PRC ruled in favor of PNM Resources, Bridges said.

The global credit crunch also didn’t stop the deal from happening, even though the buyer is controlled by a private equity fund, Lindsay Goldberg. Among the banks that participated in financing Continental’s purchase is Royal Bank of Canada, Bridges said.

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The Federal Reserve approved Atlanta securities-market operator IntercontinentalExchange Inc.’s application to clear credit-default swaps. ICE, as the company is known, must still obtain approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company hired Shearman & Sterling bank regulatory partner Brad Sabel in New York for advice on the applications, according to ICE’s general counsel, Johnathan Short. Sabel is a former staff attorney with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Credit-default swaps are derivatives used to hedge against losses or to speculate on the ability of companies to repay their debt, according to Bloomberg News. The contracts pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities if a borrower fails to adhere to its debt agreements.

Federal regulators have made a priority of moving the multitrillion-dollar market for credit-default swaps into exchange clearinghouses like ICE, according to the Chicago Tribune.

American International Group Inc., once the world’s largest insurer, almost went bankrupt last year from its use of credit-default swaps, Bloomberg reported.

For the third time in three years, lawyers at Spell Pless Davis Saurol worked up the sale of Rockdale Medical Center of Conyers to a private company—and on Jan. 30, a deal finally closed, as it was taken over by LifePoint Hospitals Inc. of Brentwood, Tenn.

The deal probably took its toll on the copy machines and printers at nine-lawyer Spell Pless because of the Georgia Hospital Acquisition Act. The 1997 law requires the state attorney general to approve all sales of nonprofit hospitals to private entities after making sure the new owner has committed to, among other things, provide care to disadvantaged patients.

For the two aborted deals and the one that went through, Spell Pless lawyers engaged in the document-intensive AG review process, said Spell Pless partner Larry Pless.

“These AG applications are voluminous,” Pless said. “When you leave the office, you need multiple dollies to carry out all the binders.”

Rockdale Medical Center's first proposed buyer, Signature Hospital Corp. of Houston, was selected in an auction held in the spring of 2007. But Signature had difficulty solidifying its financing and had to restructure its $87 million offer. Later, Signature's financing collapsed completely and the company was forced to withdraw.

The Hospital Authority of Rockdale County, which administered Rockdale Medical Center, went back to the drawing board. The authority's investment bank, Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin Inc., held a new auction. The bank and authority decided to go with a company that had submitted a bid during the first auction. This deal was a winner.

In the deal, LifePoint acquired the 138-bed hospital Rockdale Medical Center for $80 million in cash. LifePoint owns 47 U.S. hospitals, located primarily in rural and ex-urban areas. Rockdale Medical Center is the company's first hospital in Georgia.

Getting regulatory approval from the AG's office required months of work for the attorneys and bankers involved, not to mention the volunteer members of the hospital authority's board of directors, Pless said.

Assistant attorney general Shereen Walls led the review of the LifePoint offer and assistant attorney general Ray Lerer led the review of the Signature offer. Only 18 proposed sales of nonprofit hospitals to private companies have been reviewed by the attorney general.

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The digital revolution in television is just around the corner. But broadcasters have been preparing for years. And this revolution affects everyone who offers free programming—from big broadcasters like CBS and NBC, to government-owned broadcasters like PBS.

On Feb. 17, all U.S. television stations are scheduled to stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and switch to digital broadcasting. The switch is designed to offer consumers better-quality video and audio.

One attorney who specializes in Federal Communications Commission law, Arnold & Porter senior counsel Theodore Frank in Washington, has been providing counsel to a longtime client, Georgia Public Broadcasting, on the upcoming digital TV transition, according to the state Department of Law. GPB operates nine Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) TV stations in Georgia, in addition to a radio network.

For its most recently completed fiscal year, the state of Georgia paid Frank about $232,000 for his FCC legal work advising state-owned GPB, as well as for work advising Georgia State University, which owns a student-run radio station, WRAS-FM.

Frank’s work also included advising the two state entities on matters not related to the digital TV transition, including carriage rights and investigating consumer complaints, said Russ Willard, a spokesman for the state Department of Law.