Front seat at the crisis

When Walter Moeling IV started his law career with Atlanta firm Powell Goldstein LLP in 1968, the South's unofficial capital offered a great place to establish a banking practice. The Sunbelt was booming as U.S. jobs and population shifted into the region. New residents meant growing communities and, of course, new banks to finance them.

Today Atlanta is still a great place to be a bank lawyer, if not a banker. Roughly 20% of the country's bank failures since August have been Georgia-based institutions, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "Georgia is ground zero in the banking crisis," says Moeling.

For the past 40 years, Moeling has helped would-be bankers obtain charters and advised institutions as they expanded through acquisitions. Today his business is more likely to be helping banks deal with the intricacies of federal receivership or takeovers of troubled institutions. "We have lost a dozen banks in the current crisis, and we're going to lose a fair number more," he says.

Moeling has had a hand in the resolution in nearly all of the failed Georgia institutions, most recently as an adviser to Silverton Bank NA, which the FDIC unsuccessfully tried to sell to private equity buyers before regulators began liquidating it in May. Advising applicants for the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program has also been steady business.

Powell Goldstein, where Moeling has worked since graduating from Duke University School of Law, merged with St. Louis-based Bryan Cave LLP in January. The combined firm's banking group now employs 25 lawyers and represents roughly 450 banks around the country.

Moeling says remaining at the same firm for his entire career has allowed him to establish a stable client base. "I don't know how to convince younger people that flipping firms every three years for a higher buck is not the best strategy for the long term," he says. And he notes Atlanta has offered him plenty of opportunity as well. Moeling recalls advising the founders of a software company, Goldleaf Technologies Inc. of Hahira, Ga., back in 1990. "Their first board meetings were held in the back of a gas station and their directors had on blue jeans and boots. A couple of good old boys and one technology genius put together this incredible company," he says. Goldleaf was sold to Equifax Inc. of Atlanta in 1997.

Excitement is harder to come by these days. Bankers in Atlanta saw the downturn coming but were caught off guard by its severity, Moeling says. He recalls being assured by economists in 2005 that foreign investors would pick up the slack when Americans lost their appetite for new ventures. But saddled with their own problems, the foreigners never came. "I bought 10 Rosetta Stone tapes to get ready for the influx," says Moeling. "They're gathering dust."