Two Jones Day-Atlanta lawyers are leading a team advising Eastman Chemical Co. in a planned $100 million cash acquisition of Sterling Chemicals.

The deal is targeted in part at increasing Eastman’s production of environmentally friendly plastics. Read more »

Mike Hobbs doesn’t get to shout “Fore!” every time he goes to his office at Troutman Sanders, but he does get to spend a fair amount of time thinking about golf. He even gets to bill for it.

That’s because sports company Mizuno’s golf division is one of his clients. In recent months, he’s negotiated endorsement deals on Mizuno’s behalf with Luke Donald, who won the BMW PGA Championship in a playoff in May, garnering the world’s No. 1 ranking in men’s golf and also scoring a No. 1 on the PGA Tour’s money leaders list with $3.5 million in winnings, as of Sunday; Jonathan Byrd, No. 12 on the money list with $2.3 million; and Charles Howell III, No. 43 on the money list with $1.2 million. Read more »

When photovoltaic power plant developer Belectric Inc. decided to sell its 30-megawatt DC solar generation project in California to Constellation Energy, it tapped Smith, Gambrell & Russell to head the legal end of the deal.

Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Smith Gambrell lawyers Hans-Michael Kraus and Thomas H. Hong served as co-lead transaction counsel; Simone von Werden Kraus handled corporate matters; Thomas A. Spillman oversaw real estate issues; Stephen E. O’Day and Jessica Lee Reece worked on sustainability issues and Scott D. Cahalan and J. David Mura Jr. handled construction issues. Read more »

Atlanta-based Iron Data Solutions’ recent recapitalization and sale got a boost from a bevy of local lawyers, with counsel from King & Spalding, led by Russell B. Richards, doing most of the  target’s heavy legal lifting.

The parties did not reveal the price tag on the deal, in which Arlington Capital Partners, a Washington-area private equity firm whose primary buy-side counsel was Kirkland & Ellis, made a major investment in Iron Data. Iron Data provides data processing, business intelligence and other software for government and transportation clients. Read more »

Gentlemen and ladies, start your engines. Or at least line up your quarters and fill your horses’ nosebags.

Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker lawyers are advising Yonkers Racing Corp., a provider of video gaming machines, live harness racing and simulcasting services in New York on its new offering of $100 million aggregate principal amount of 11 3/8 percent senior secured notes, due in 2016.

(You can see why I tried to ease you into this, right?) Read more »

Lawyers from King & Spalding stepped up to the plate this week to help the Houston Astros and their chairman and CEO, Drayton McLane Jr., ink the ballclub’s $680 million sale to a group headed by Houston businessman Jim Crane, CEO of the private equity fund Crane Capital.

The parties signed the paperwork at Minute Maid Park in Houston Monday afternoon, but the deal will not be finalized unless it wins the approval of Major League Baseball. Read more »

When Stadion Money Management, a Watkinsville, Ga.-based investment advisory firm with $6.7 billion in assets under management decided to sell a majority stake in its business to a private equity firm, it needed some legal help.

Lawyers from Chamberlain Hrdlicka represented Stadion, and attorneys from Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton represented its associated mutual fund company. Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker provided counsel to the independent trustees of Stadion Investment Trust. A team from Goodwin Proctor represented the acquirer, Boston-based  TA Associates, a private equity shop with a $16 billion capital base which plans to buy just more than 54 percent of the company for an undisclosed sum.

In a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Monday, the trust solicited shareholder votes to approve the transaction and the change of control.

Paul Hastings partner Reinaldo Pascual, who represents the trustees, said he got his client from a former colleague, Kilpatrick partner Jeffrey T. Skinner, who tapped him when he saw that the trustees needed independent counsel.

Stadion, said Pascual, “has experienced a lot of growth over the last four years and I think the expectation is they’ll continue to experience growth, so private equity was interested and … wanted to invest in the company.”

The shareholders’ meeting on the vote is slated for June 23.

Faced with a choice between being undone by debt  or getting snapped up at auction, Scovill Fasteners, a Clarkesville, Ga.-based maker of snaps, buttons and fasteners for customers including Esprit, Banana Republic and NASA, has chosen the latter.

Scovill and four related companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia, including in their petition an outline for a Section 363 sale of substantially all of their assets to private equity firm Global SFI Holdings for $17 million. Read more »

David Stockton and a team of lawyers from Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton have just completed a $475 million acquisition, hard on the heels of negotiating a bridge loan and then three separate financing deals that raised $685 million for client James River Coal Co.

The NASDAQ-traded James River used the cash from the financing deals, which involved three separate types of securities, to fund its purchase of International Resource Partners, a privately held partnership based on Charleston, W. Va. Read more »

Hamilton State Bancshares has completed a $231.6 million private placement of common stock with the help of its lawyers at Alston & Bird.

Two hedge funds, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and Tailwind Capital, each are investing about $60 million in the deal; other investors and terms were not disclosed. Read more »