With the global capital markets nearly in a coma, companies are looking at all their options for boosting liquidity. For the airline industry, it appears, their current favored option for raising money has been so-called continuous offering programs.

The latest airline to pull off such a deal is Delta Air Lines Inc., taking legal advice from Kilpatrick Stockton partner Ben Barkley. On Dec. 17, Delta announced plans to sell up to 18.2 million shares of its common stock in a continuous offering program. Based on the stock’s price the day the sale was announced, it would raise up to $200 million for Delta.

Citigroup Global Markets is underwriting the stock sale, with legal advice coming from Shearman & Sterling partner Abigail Arms in Washington.

Kilpatrick Stockton has had a relationship with Delta for a number of years, although most of its work had not been in the corporate area, Barkley said. Barkley worked with Delta General Counsel Richard B. Hirst, who was previously general counsel of Northwest Airlines Corp. Delta and Northwest completed their merger on Oct. 29.

These types of stock sales are called different things by different investment banks. Citigroup prefers the term “continuous offering program,” but Merrill Lynch called a similar transaction it’s conducting for AMR Corp.’s American Airlines an “ATM Equity Offering Sales Agreement.” ATM stands for “at the market,” Barkley said.

UAL Corp.’s United Airlines and Continental Airlines each have also recently launched similar continuous stock offerings, Barkley said.

In these types of stock sales, the underwriter sells new stock in the open market on a daily basis, according to Delta’s prospectus. The size of each day’s stock sale depends on the market’s performance. Delta won’t receive a large cash infusion, as it would from a single-day securities offering. But Delta will benefit from not flooding the market with its shares, which could potentially increase Delta’s stock volatility.

Delta will receive a daily report from Citigroup on how that day’s stock sales went.

“Citi will provide to us written confirmation following the close of trading on the [New York Stock Exchange] each day in which shares of common stock are sold by it for us under the equity distribution agreement. Each confirmation will include the number of shares sold on that day, the gross sales price per share, the net proceeds to us and the compensation payable by us to Citi,” Delta said in its prospectus.

Delta plans to use the proceeds from its continuous offering program to “replace funds that were used to pay the employee portion of withholding taxes on the issuance and vesting of equity awards made to our employees in connection with our merger with Northwest” Airlines, according to a regulatory filing.

The recession has meant a precipitous drop in the number of M&A deals this year, meaning less work for investment bankers and lawyers.

But one segment of law firms’ corporate practice groups remains strong—advising banks and financial institutions. In the past month, two South Carolina banks turned to Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough for legal counsel on securities offerings.

Nelson Mullins partners Neil Grayson and John Jennings were counsel to SCBT Financial Corp. of Columbia and First Community Corp. of Lexington on securities work. Grayson works out of Nelson Mullins’ offices in Atlanta and Greenville, S.C. Jennings works in Greenville.

SCBT Financial raised about $27 million in a private placement of 1.01 million shares of common stock.

First Community sold $11.4 million in preferred stock to the U.S. Treasury as part of its Troubled Asset Relief Program Capital Purchase Program. First Community also sold 195,915 in 10-year warrants to Treasury.

SCBT Financial operates South Carolina Bank and Trust, as well as four offices of The Scottish Bank in North Carolina. First Community operates 11 offices of First Community Bank in the Columbia, S.C. area.

Latex products developer Vystar Corp. of Gwinnett County tapped longtime counsel Greenberg Traurig partner Gerald Baxter for work on its plans to issue stock to a venture capital company.

Universal Capital Management Inc., a publicly traded venture capital company based in Wilmington, Del., is an investor in Vystar, according to regulatory documents. UCM also provides management services, strategic planning, investment banking consultation and other services to Vystar. As payment for those services, Vystar intends to issue 600,000 shares of common stock to UCM.

The transaction is described in Vystar’s prospectus as an initial public offering. Baxter declined to comment, citing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “quiet period” rules for companies in the midst of preparing for an IPO.

Vystar, based in Duluth, owns the rights to a technology used to make natural rubber latex products. The technology, which is branded under the name Vytex, reduces “antigenic protein in natural rubber latex products made with Vytex to virtually undetectable levels,” according to the company’s prospectus. “Allergic reactions to untreated latex are a significant detriment affecting numerous individuals globally,” the company said.

In April, Vystar signed a contract with a Malaysian company to commercially manufacture its products.

Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll partner Kean DeCarlo in Atlanta and Dergosits & Noah partner Michael Dergosits in San Francisco are listed in U.S. Patent & Trademark Office records as intellectual property counsel to Vystar.

As the list of Georgia banks that have applied for funding in the U.S. Treasury’s TARP program grows, only two of those banks, as of late November, have actually closed on their financing.

SunTrust Banks Inc. was the first. The latest to complete the financing transaction is Ameris Bancorp of Moultrie, Ga. Rogers & Hardin partners Steve Fox and Jody Spencer, longstanding outside counsel to the bank, advised Ameris on the application, Spencer said.

Ameris sold 52,000 shares of preferred stock to the Treasury for $52 million in cash, according to a regulatory filing. Treasury also obtained a 10-year warrant to purchase up to 679,443 shares of Ameris’ common stock. The transaction was conducted under Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program Capital Purchase Program, also known as TARP.

Ameris agreed to certain restrictions on compensation for its executives, as required under the TARP plan.

It’s not luck that Ameris was only the second Georgia bank to complete its TARP application, said Spencer [photo, right].

“The Treasury is interested in supporting healthy banks,” Spencer said. “Ameris applied voluntarily, of course, and was approved very quickly. I think that’s a good statement on their position.”

Describing Ameris as “the prototypical community bank,” Spencer said Ameris didn’t delve into complicated or risky loans like subprime mortgages.

Ameris operates 46 locations of Ameris Bank in south Georgia, north Florida, Alabama and South Carolina.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. kept most of its legal questions in-house on a $1 billion securities offering.

The company’s general counsel, John R. Parker Jr., was the lead counsel on Coca-Cola Enterprises’ sale of $1 billion in five-year notes, according to a regulatory filing. Coca-Cola Enterprises did consult with attorneys from Shearman & Sterling on tax law and on issues related to the laws of New York state. Sidley Austin advised the underwriters.

Parker and Shearman & Sterling were also Coca-Cola Enterprises’ legal team in July for its sale of $300 million in five-year notes.

Parker succeeded John J. Culhane in June as general counsel of Coca-Cola Enterprises. In a $275 million securities offering in May, Culhane was the company’s legal counsel, accompanied by Sidley Austin on New York state law matters and Shearman on tax law.

Coca-Cola Co. owns about 35 percent of Coca-Cola Enterprises. The company is the world’s largest bottler and distributor of Coca-Cola’s beverages.

Powell Goldstein’s merger partner—Bryan Cave—maintains an active corporate practice. Bryan Cave placed 10^th on Thomson Financial’s 2007 ranking of law firms on the number of U.S. M&A deals for which they advised the target or acquiring company.

Bryan Cave’s most-recent work in the corporate transactions area involved a longtime client, Reinsurance Group of America Inc., better known as RGA. Partners Randy Wang and Jim Levey advised RGA on common stock offering. RGA plans to sell 8.9 million shares at $33.89 per share. Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley are the underwriters.

RGA, one of the world’s largest life reinsurance companies, is headquartered in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Mo.

Although Wang and Levey both work in St. Louis, Bryan Cave’s largest office, the law firm’s corporate transactions lawyers are spread out geographically. St. Louis counts 57 lawyers in the corporate transactions practice group, while New York has 30, Kansas City has 29 and Los Angeles has 12.

In addition to RGA, some of Bryan Cave’s other clients in the corporate area include Barnes & Noble Inc., Energizer Holdings Inc., International Paper Co. and Sprint Nextel Corp.

Troutman Sanders partner John Mercer advised Wisconsin Electric Power Co. on a $300 million securities offering.

The electric utility said in a regulatory filing that it plans to sell $300 million of unsecured debentures at 6 percent due Apr. 1, 2014. Wisconsin Electric Power will use the proceeds from the offering to “repay short-term debt, for working capital and for other general corporate purposes, including the payment of dividends,” according to a prospectus.

Troutman associates Patrick Macken and Brad Resweber assisted Mercer. All three Troutman lawyers work out of Atlanta. Dewey & LeBoeuf is advising the underwriters, Citigroup Global Markets and Wachovia Capital Markets.

Wisconsin Electric Power is a subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Corp. Wisconsin Electric Power sells electricity to more than 1.1 million customers in its home state and in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

Jones Day partner Tim Mann in Atlanta is advising MPS Group Inc. on a planned securities sale, according to a regulatory filing. MPS Group last week filed a registration statement for its plans to sell 7 million shares of common stock for its employee stock incentive plans. The staffing company said it could raise up to $64.6 million from the stock sale.

MPS, of Jacksonville, Fla., operates staffing businesses under several names, including Modis and Special Counsel.

Truckers portray themselves as the last American cowboys. Apparently, trucking companies also think of themselves as mavericks, at least when it comes to hiring lawyers.

A large majority of motor-carrier companies in the U.S. flock not to New York or Washington when they need legal advice on corporate, insurance, regulatory and litigation-defense matters. Instead, they seek out two firms – one located in the Crossroads of America, and another located in the Great Plains.

“We’re in Indiana, which is called the Crossroads of America, and that’s an appropriate location for our law firm,” said Gregory M. Feary, managing partner of Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary. “More than 90 percent of our revenue comes from trucking companies. We have 22 practice areas and all devoted to their areas of law as they are applied to the trucking industry.”

Scopelitis Garvin employs 56 lawyers, most located in Indianapolis, but the firm also has offices in Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Washington. Its clients include Schneider National Inc. of Green Bay, Wisc., the largest privately owned truckload carrier; and YRC Worldwide Inc., the parent company of Yellow Transportation and Roadway Express.

The other firm—Scudder Law Firm PC of Lincoln, Nebraska—is much smaller than Scopelitis Garvin but it also derives the bulk of its revenue from trucking companies. Scudder’s attorneys focus on mergers-and-acquisitions and securities work.

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David Stockton’s client, an Appalachian coal mining company, got in just under the wire.

James River Coal Co., the morning of Monday, Sept. 29, raised $44 million through the sale of 1.5 million shares of common stock. The deal happened just in the nick of time, said Stockton, a corporate partner at Kilpatrick Stockton in Atlanta. That’s because later that Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 777.68 points, its largest one-day drop in history, after the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout bill for the financial sector.

“The sale closed on Monday morning, and then the market tanked that afternoon,” Stockton said. “If [the James River securities offering] had not closed on Monday until the end of the day, there could have been problems.”

What had made James River’s securities sale possible was a recent rise in the company’s stock price along with rival coal companies. Coal stocks had risen in the past year because the price of coal had risen. That paralleled an increase in price of oil, Stockton said.

James River’s stock had risen significantly over the past 12 months, touching a 52-week high of $62.83 per share in late June, Stockton said. With its stock price up, that made it an opportune time to proceed with a stock sale, Stockton said. James River’s investment bank, UBS Securities LLC, made the decision on Monday morning to proceed with the stock sale.

Mining disasters that occurred in Kentucky and West Virginia in 2006 indirectly led to James River’s decision to raise capital through a stock sale. Because of increased health and occupational safety regulations that were implemented in the wake of the Kentucky Darby and Sago mine disasters, coal companies have had to boost spending to comply with the new rules.

“These new regulations have been very costly and have required major capital expenditures,” Stockton said. “They have been a major financial burden for the coal companies.”

According to a regulatory filing, among the expenses that James River incurred from the new regulations were: constructing and maintaining caches for the storage of additional self-contained self rescuers throughout underground mines; installing rescue chambers in underground mines; and installing cable lifelines from the mine portal to all sections of the mine to assist in emergency escape.

Working with Stockton on the securities offering was Kilpatrick associate Josh Galante in New York. Cravath, Swaine & Moore advised UBS.

James River is headquartered in Richmond, Va., and operates 15 underground mines and 11 surface mines in Kentucky and Indiana. James River’s largest customer is Georgia Power Co., according to regulatory filings.