Wendy Hagenau, formerly a Bryan Cave partner, has been appointed to a judgeship with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Hagenau, a bankruptcy and restructuring lawyer, has represented both debtors and creditors in Chapter 11 cases. She’s also handled receivership actions, workouts and general commercial litigation, including dischargeability litigation.

She graduated from Duke University’s law school in 1983 and joined Powell Goldstein Frazer & Murphy in 1988, prior to the firm’s 2009 merger with Bryan Cave.

One of the Georgia banks that failed last year—Haven Trust Bancorp Inc.— selected Bryan Cave Powell Goldstein to provide legal advice on its liquidation proceedings in bankruptcy court.

Bryan Cave partner Wendy Hagenau is listed as lead counsel to Haven Trust Bancorp in documents filed on Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

On Dec. 12, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed the receiver of Haven Trust Bank. BB&T Corp. of Winston-Salem, N.C., acquired Haven Trust’s $506 million in deposits.

Haven Trust agreed to pay Bryan Cave a retainer of $30,000 for past and future legal work, according to a court filing. The law firm had received $26,534.83 of that bill as on Monday.

The law firm apparently had a difficult time estimating how much it should bill Haven Trust.

“In arriving at a flat fee to charge the debtor, it is difficult to estimate the amount of time which the firm may have to spend in the future in this case given that this is not a routine Chapter 7,” Hagenau wrote in a statement and disclosure of compensation filed on Monday.

“Especially in this environment, there are various potential regulatory agencies which may investigate the Debtor,” Hagenau wrote.

Deals can still be made, even in this brutal economy.

In a deal involving companies that make anti-counterfeiting technology, New York private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg LLC acquired a Alpharetta company’s subsidiary, which had been put on the auction block.

The Alpharetta company, Nanoventions Holdings LLC, turned to longtime outside counsel at Bryan Cave-Powell Goldstein for advice on corporate and intellectual property matters.

Nanoventions sold its Visual Physics unit to Lindsay Goldberg for undisclosed terms. Lindsay Goldberg will combine Visual Physics with its portfolio company Crane & Co. of Dalton, Mass.

Visual Physics makes micro-optic security films used for anti-counterfeiting and brand protection applications, according to the company. Crane makes fine stationery and counterfeit-deterrent banknote papers.

Bryan Cave-Powell Goldstein partner Todd Wade advised Nanoventions on corporate matters, and partner Scott Killingsworth advised on intellectual property. Bryan Cave-Powell Goldstein partner Rick Miller sits on Nanoventions’ board but wasn’t involved in providing legal advice, Wade said.

Thomas Kayden Horstemeyer & Risley partner Todd Deveau serves as patent counsel to Visual Physics, Wade said. Choate Hall & Stewart partner James Hackett in Boston advised Lindsay Goldberg.

Lindsay Goldberg lined up financing for its acquisition of Visual Physics, but the companies aren’t disclosing terms of the financing, Wade said. Cleveland investment bank Brown Gibbons Lang & Co. ran the auction for Nanoventions.

Federal securities regulators in Atlanta on Thursday accused an Alpharetta currency trader of running a $25 million Ponzi scheme.

The Securities and Exchange Commission have accused CRE Capital Corp. and James G. Ossie with violating federal securities laws. The SEC said CRE Capital and Ossie, the firm’s president, promised investors 10 percent profits per months on currency trades in the U.S. and Japan. At least 120 investors bought into the Ponzi scheme, the SEC said in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

“CRE does not generate sufficient returns from currency trading to pay the promised returns,” the SEC said in a court filing. “The investment program is a Ponzi scheme and returns to investors are paid from funds contributed by new investors.”

Taylor English Duma attorney Bill Leonard is representing CRE Capital and Ossie.

Bryan Cave Powell Goldstein partners Thomas S. Richey and Jennifer D. Odom and associates Jason R. Curles, Stacey G. Evans, all in Atlanta, are representing the court-appointed receiver, GlassRatner Advisory & Capital Group LLC managing director Michael Fuqua.

Handling the matter for the SEC are District Trial Counsel William P. Hicks, Senior Trial Counsel Alana R. Black and attorney W. Shawn Murnahan.

A court-reporting and legal-technology company founded in Atlanta just got a lot bigger—both in the size of its workforce and in the size of its capital accounts.

In a series of transactions, Accel-KKR acquired an equity stake in Alexander Gallo Holdings LLC of Atlanta. Subsequently, Gallo Holdings acquired Hobart West Group Inc. of Florham Park, N.J. Terms were not disclosed for either of the deals.

The Accel-KKR investment allowed Gallo Holdings to acquire Hobart West, company founder Alex Gallo said. Hobart West had operations in more than 20 states, boosting Gallo Holdings’ total number of offices to more than 60. Gallo will remain president and chief executive of the combined company.

Gallo Holdings’ offerings include court reporting, legal video, trial presentation and staffing professionals. It operates under several trade names, including Brown & Gallo and Jack Daniel Court Reporting.

Accel-KKR is a joint venture that focuses on technology companies and involves two of the most influential investment firms. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. of New York, also known as KKR, is one of the world’s biggest private equity funds with more than $50 billion under management. Accel Partners of Palo Alto, Calif., is a venture capital fund that has invested in Facebook, Real Networks and UUNet.

Gallo Holdings becomes Accel-KKR’s 12th company in its portfolio, including current and past investments. Accel-KKR’s other investments have included CRS Retail Systems and iTradeNetwork.

Powell Goldstein partner Stuart Johnson and associate Hannah Crockett were Gallo Holdings’ local counsel on the transactions, Gallo said. Johnson declined to comment on the deal.

The New York law firm Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch was legal adviser to Gallo Holdings on the merger agreement, Gallo said. Kirkland & Ellis advised Gallo Holdings on issues related to the financing of the deal. Andrews Kurth advised Accel-KKR. Hunton & Williams lawyers in Richmond, Va., were counsel to Hobart West.

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.

As some large banks like BB&T, SunTrust and Fifth Third Bancorp accept funding from the U.S. Treasury Department to weather the credit crisis, smaller banks are taking different steps to bolster their financial position. In one such instance, Powell Goldstein counsel Lyn Schroeder [left] is advising a South Carolina community bank on its plan to take itself private.

First South Bancorp Inc. said in a regulatory filing that it plans to convert some of its publicly traded common stock to preferred stock. The company then plans to terminate its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The moves will allow First South Bancorp to save money by avoiding the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The company estimated it will save about $110,000 per year in management time, legal and accounting fees and other expenses.

The proposal requires the approval of First South Bancorp shareholders. First South Bancorp said it first began discussing a going-private transaction with Powell Goldstein in May, according to its proxy statement. It considered other alternatives, such as a reserve stock split, before decided to pursue the going-private deal.

First South Bancorp operates six locations of First South Bank in the Palmetto State—in the cities of Bluffton, Columbia, Greenville and Spartanburg.

Lawyers from Hartman, Simons, Spielman & Wood and Sutherland are the legal advisers on the bankruptcy court-approved sale of a Georgia natural gas marketer.

Sutherland partners Tom Byrne and Knox Dobbins advised MXenergy Inc. on its agreement to acquire Catalyst Natural Gas LLC for about $2 million. Hartman Simons partners Sam Arden and Joe DeLisle were counsel to Catalyst on the deal. The sale has received approval from U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Joyce Bihary and from the Georgia Public Service Commission.

Catalyst, of Atlanta, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Oct. 1 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Catalyst was a natural-gas marketing company that had served 34,000 customers in Georgia. MXenergy, of Stamford, Conn., provides natural gas and electricity in the U.S. and Canada.

In addition to the sales agreement, a host of Atlanta-area attorneys are advising clients in the Catalyst bankruptcy proceedings.

Jones & Walden partners Leon Jones and Denise Dotson are bankruptcy counsel to Catalyst, while Powell Goldstein partner Robert Mercer is legal counsel to the official committee of unsecured creditors to Catalyst.

Cohen Pollock Merlin & Small partner Gus Small is representing interested party Gas South LLC, which said in a court filing that it estimates that it’s owed about $1.5 million by either Atlanta Gas Light or by Catalyst. That debt is a result of Catalyst under-supplying the natural gas system shared by the state’s gas-marketing companies, Small wrote in a court filing on behalf of natural-gas marketer Gas South.

McKenna Long & Aldridge partners Gary Marsh and Craig Dowdy and associate David Gordon are counsel to creditor Atlanta Gas Light Co.

Rogers & Hardin partners Kimberly Myers, Tony Powers and Robert Remar are representing creditor Georgia Natural Gas, a unit of SouthStar Energy Services.

King & Spalding partner Paul Ferdinands is counsel to creditor SCANA Corp.

Morris, Manning & Martin partners Becky Patrick and David Rabin are counsel to Infinite Energy Inc. on litigation it filed against Catalyst. Hartman Simons partner David L. Pardue is defending Catalyst in the Infinite Energy litigation.

Scroggins & Williamson partners Robert Williamson and Hayden Kepner are counsel to interested party Constellation Energy Commodities Group Inc. McDermott Will & Emery partners Nathan Coco in Chicago and Robert Stephens in Houston are also advising Constellation Energy.

Now that an involuntary petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy filed against AtheroGenics Inc. has been converted to Chapter 11 status, interested parties are lining up legal counsel.

King & Spalding partners James A. Pardo Jr. and Mark Maloney are representing AtheroGenics in the matter. Pardo filed the motion on Monday to convert the case to Chapter 11. King & Spalding associate Michelle Carter is also working on the case.

On Monday, Pardo submitted a request to the court that Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker partners Walter Jospin in Atlanta and Richard Chesley in Chicago be approved as counsel to the independent members of Atherogenics’ board of directors.

Additionally, Greenberg Traurig partners John D. Elrod of Atlanta and John B. Hutton III of Miami are advising The Bank of New York Mellon, an interested party in the case.

Last month, a group of five hedge funds filed an involuntary petition against AtheroGenics. That filing came after the company had said it wouldn’t make a payment on some of its outstanding debt and after it had hired Morgan Stanley to explore strategic alternatives.

The group of hedge funds, which includes AQR Capital Management LLC of Greenwich, Conn., is taking legal advice from Powell Goldstein partner Penn Nicholson in Atlanta and from a group of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr attorneys in New York. AtheroGenics’ general counsel is Joseph M. Gaynor Jr., a former Powell Goldstein associate.

As of Wednesday morning, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge James Massey had not yet approved the motions to hire King & Spalding and Paul Hastings.

AtheroGenics, of Alpharetta, develops pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases, including diabetes and coronary heart disease. In regulatory filings, AtheroGenics has said that the company’s substantial debt burden has prevented it from developing its primary asset, AGI-1067, an inflammatory drug that has also been studied for the treatment of diabetes.

Powell Goldstein was an adviser on an asset sale that allowed a Georgia bank to exit from the banking industry in North Carolina.

PoGo partner Katherine Koops and associate Amber Nash were counsel to Omni Financial Services Inc. on the sale of four branch offices in Fayetteville, N.C. to Capital Bank Corp. of Raleigh, N.C. Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan in Raleigh advised Capital Bank.

The amount that Capital Bank will pay has not yet been determined, but is based on a formula, according to a regulatory filing. Capital Bank is acquiring deposits and loans from Omni totaling $156 million in value. The sale is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Omni sold the branches because of “the current market environment” and to strengthen its “capital position,” according to a news release.

Omni Financial is the 16th-largest bank holding company headquartered in the state of Georgia, as measured by total assets, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Omni Financial, of Atlanta, operates Omni National Bank, which has locations in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and other locations.

If the deal with Omni closes, Capital Bank will operate 31 bank offices throughout the Tar Heel State. Capital Bank currently has offices in Asheville, Hickory, Pittsboro, Wake Forest and other North Carolina cities.