MID-DAY DEAL ROUND-UP

In a sign that Apple’s improved iPhone may be loosening the grip of BlackBerry maker Reseach in Motion’s on the corporate market, British bank HSBC is considering making the iPhone 3G the mobile device for its global employees, according to the New York Times’ DealBook.

Private equity firms are increasingly turning to the leveraged loan market to make up for the paucity of leveraged buyout deals, writes the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal.

Add Cox Enterprises to the list of newspaper owners shedding assets, says TheDeal.com. Cox plans to sell dailies and weeklies, but will hang on to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

 
OTHER DEALS OF THE DAY:
** Brazil’s Ultrapar Participacoes said on Thursday it will buy Texaco’s fuel distribution assets in Brazil for about $720 million, in the latest shake-up of the country’s gas-station business.

** British Airways, American Airlines and Spain’s Iberia have signed a deal for a transatlantic tie-up and will now file for antitrust immunity in the United States, the carriers said on Thursday.

** Clearwater Seafoods Income Fund said on Thursday it will be taken private by a consortium led by Clearwater Fine Foods Inc in a deal worth about C$40 million.

** Insurer Swiss Life stepped up its move into German pension sales by cutting share buybacks to pay for a stake in MLP and more shares in AWD sending its stock lower.

** Protherics Plc shares surged more than 40 percent on Thursday after the biotech company said it had received several bid approaches, prompting speculation it may be bought by AstraZeneca Plc, which has a deal dating back to 2005 with Protherics covering its experimental drug CytoFab for sepsis, a deadly syndrome linked to serious bloodstream infections.