Asia Set for Cautious Open Ahead of Ukraine Talks: Markets Wrap
US equity futures contracts were little changed in early trading after the S&P 500 Index closed lower on Friday, while the dollar held in a narrow range against major peers.
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Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Grundfos successfully completes acquisition of US water treatment company
The acquisition of Newterra enhances Grundfos' water treatment portfolio and is yet another important step towards Grundfos' ambition to become a global leader in water treatment HOUSTON, Aug. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Danish company Grundfos, a global leader in advanced water solutions, has completed the acquisition of the Pittsburgh-based water and wastewater treatment solutions company Newterra. The acquisition underlines Grundfos' commitment in expanding its water treatment and wastewater solutions capabilities as well as Grundfos' strategic ambition to grow its presence in the US and Canadian markets. "The addition of Newterra is another important step to realise Grundfos' ambition to become a global leader in water treatment," said Inge Delobelle, EVP & Divisional CEO, Industry division, Grundfos, adding: "It enhances our ability to provide modular, efficient and scalable water and wastewater treatment systems to our customers both in the US and the rest of the world. With Newterra on board, we can offer more complete, energy- and water-efficient solutions to our customers, helping them treat, reduce and reuse water more effectively, offering one of the most comprehensive water treatment portfolios in the industry." Grundfos' revenue surpassed USD five billion in 2024, and with the inclusion of Newterra, the company's water treatment business will have more than 1,500 highly skilled employees across Europe and North America and revenues exceeding USD 350 million. Inge Delobelle: "In a world where it is more critical than ever that we treat, reduce and reuse water with great care, building a strong water treatment business is pivotal. In addition to combining the many strengths of Newterra and its excellent solutions and offerings with the Grundfos water treatment business, I look forward to welcoming a group of dedicated colleagues who share our passion for innovation, customer focus and ambition to create sustainable solutions to the world's water and climate challenges." Since 2020, Grundfos has completed a series of strategic acquisitions to build a strong water treatment platform. Building on these acquisitions, Grundfos plans to further strengthen its water treatment business. The company also aims to double its US business by 2030 and recently announced that it will expand its production footprint in the US by building a new plant in Brookshire, Texas, where the company has its US headquarters. Grundfos has acquired Newterra from the Chicago-based private equity firm Frontenac for an undisclosed fee. About Grundfos: Grundfos pioneers solutions to the world's water and climate challenges and improves the quality of life for people. As a leading global pump and water solutions company, we promise to respect, protect, and advance the flow of water by providing energy and water efficient solutions and systems for a wide range of applications for water utilities, industries and buildings. For more information, please visit: Water Treatment (Solutions) is part of Grundfos Industry Division and focuses on offering technologies and systems for treating water across various applications. The Water Treatment business supports circular water practices and improved water efficiency in industrial settings. It has five production sites in the US and Europe, located in Cadriano (Italy), Stilling (Denmark), Mandeville (Louisiana, US), San Diego (California, US), and Grudziadz (Poland). Learn more about what we do in Water Treatment: About Newterra: Newterra designs, engineers, manufactures, and services environmental, water, and wastewater treatment solutions that assure great performance, superb reliability, and the highest value in our global markets. The company offers a broad portfolio of reliable, trouble-free technologies and outsourcing support for municipal and industrial customers across diverse applications, including drinking water, industrial process water, wastewater, stormwater, and remediation. It has four production sites in the US and Canada, located in San Luis Obispo (California, US), Brockville (Ontario, Canada), Heber Springs (Arkansas, US), and Chaska (Minnesota, US). For more information, please visit About Frontenac: Frontenac is a Chicago-based private equity firm. The firm focuses on investing in lower middle market buyout transactions in the consumer, industrial, and services industries. Frontenac works in partnership with established operating leaders, through an executive-centric approach called CEO1ST®, which seeks to identify, acquire, and build market-leading companies through transformational acquisitions and operational excellence. Over the last 50+ years, Frontenac has built a franchise working with over 325 owners of mid-sized businesses as they address complex transition issues of liquidity, management enhancement, and growth planning. For more information, please visit Contact: Stephanie Gentry, sgentry@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Grundfos USA Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump has pledged to ‘lead a movement to get rid of' voting by mail. Will Utah be a target?
Eva Przybyla, front, and Nicholas Wells process ballots at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch) President Donald Trump this week vowed to 'lead a movement to get rid of' voting by mail ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 'WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,' the president said in a post on Truth Social Monday. Trump, who has long opposed voting by mail, continued to claim, without evidence, that it's fraught with fraud. Utah has been the only red state among eight that have conducted universal by-mail elections, including six Democratic strongholds and one swing state — a fact that some conservatives here have balked at, while others have defended the state's by-mail system as a popular, convenient and safe voting method. After Trump's post, Utah's top election official, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, issued a short statement on social media without addressing the president directly. Utah Legislature approves bill to require voter ID, phase out automatic voting by mail by 2029 'The constitutional right of individual states to choose the manner in which they conduct secure elections is a fundamental strength of our system,' Henderson said. The president, however, asserted that states should do what the federal government wants. 'Remember, the States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,' Trump said. 'They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.' Another high-ranking Republican and member of GOP legislative leadership — Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork — disagrees. McKell told Utah News Dispatch in an interview Tuesday that, like Henderson said, states have the right to choose how to administer their elections, and that he'd push back on an effort to completely undo voting by mail. 'In Utah, we're in a good place. I think there's strong support for vote by mail. There's also strong support for security,' McKell said. He added that's 'the needle we tried to thread' earlier this year when the 2025 Utah Legislature passed a bill that he sponsored to require voter ID and eventually phase out automatic voting by mail in this state by 2026. The aim of that bill, he said, was to preserve voting by mail as an option for Utah voters while also adding a new layer of security. Even though local polls have shown a vast majority of Utahns remain confident in their elections, Gallup polling shows trust nationally has decreased especially among a faction of Republican voters since 2006 as elections have become more polarized. After Trump lost the 2020 election, he ramped up rhetoric to cast doubt on election security and voting by mail. Asked about Trump's comments this week, McKell reiterated it's a matter of states rights. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'It is a federalism issue,' he said. 'If it's not enumerated in the (U.S.) Constitution, it's reserved for the states. That's article 10. I think states have the right to dictate how they run their elections.' McKell also defended Utah's track record as a state that has used voting by mail for years, starting with optional pilot programs that counties opted into before moving to universal voting by mail. 'In the state of Utah, Republicans have done really well with vote by mail. We elect Republicans,' he said, also noting that Trump in 2024 won the red state handily. 'There's generally broad support for vote by mail, especially among rural voters and elderly voters in Utah.' He added that 'it's OK if there's some tension between the federal government and state government,' but he argued the Constitution clearly reserves elections for states to control and administer. Pressed on how he'd respond to pressure from the Trump administration to get rid of voting by mail, McKell said, 'I would resist a movement that didn't originate in the state,' adding that he responds to his constituents, not the federal government. 'If there's a movement to change vote by mail, it needs to come from — it must come from — the state,' he said. 'It's a state issue. The states need to be in control of their own elections. Right now, I don't feel like there's a reason to eliminate vote by mail. I think we do a good job.' Utah election audit finds no 'significant fraud,' but raises concern over voter roll maintenance Not all Republicans in Utah embrace voting by mail, however, Earlier this year, McKell's bill was the result of a compromise between the House and Senate to more drastically restrict the state's universal vote-by-mail system. Asked whether Trump's comments could further inflame skepticism around the security of voting by mail in Utah, McKell said it's nothing new. 'We saw these comments before, and even going into the last legislative session, there were folks that opposed vote by mail.' But McKell said multiple state audits 'have shown that our elections are safe and secure,' while legislators have also made efforts to continually improve the system where issues have cropped up, like in voter roll maintenance. It remains to be seen whether Trump's comments could fan some Republican lawmakers' appetite to go after voting by mail during their next general session in January, but McKell said typically every year there's a slew of election bills for legislators to sort through. Asked whether he plans to make any tweaks to his 2025 bill, McKell said he's still talking with clerks about any possible changes. 'I feel like we did strike a really appropriate balance, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at ways to make it better,' he said, adding that he doesn't have any specific proposals yet, 'but that could change as we get closer to the legislative session.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
The Hill
25 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump's hidden goal in Alaska was to break the China-Russia axis
The Alaska summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was more than a high-stakes encounter over the Ukraine war. It signaled America's recognition that its own missteps have helped drive Russia closer to China, fueling a de facto alliance that poses the gravest threat to U.S. global preeminence since the Cold War. Washington's miscalculations helped build the China-Russia partnership it now fears most. In a world where the U.S., China and Russia are the three leading powers, the Alaska summit underscored Trump's bid to redraw the great-power triangle before it hardens against America. The president's Alaska reset seeks to undo a policy that turned two natural rivals into close strategic collaborators, by prioritizing improved U.S.-Russia ties. Trump's signaling was unmistakable. In a Fox News interview immediately after the summit, he blasted his predecessor. 'He [Biden] did something that was unthinkable,' Trump said. 'He drove China and Russia together. That's not good. If you are just a minor student of history, it's the one thing you didn't want to do.' The remark captured the essence of America's dilemma. Two powers that are historic rivals — one vast in land and resources, the other populous and expansionist — have been pushed into each other's arms by Washington's own punitive strategies. For decades, the bedrock of U.S. grand strategy was to keep Moscow and Beijing apart. President Richard Nixon's 1972 opening to Beijing was not about cozying up to Mao Zedong's brutal regime, but about exploiting the Sino-Soviet split by coopting China in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power. That strategy helped the West win the Cold War, not militarily but geopolitically. Since 2022, however, Washington has inverted that logic. In response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. unleashed unprecedented sanctions designed to cripple Russia economically. Instead, the sanctions drove the Kremlin toward Beijing while tightening Putin's grip on power. What had been an uneasy partnership has become strategic collaboration against a common adversary — the U.S. Rather than playing one against the other, America finds itself confronting a two-against-one dynamic, with China as the primary gainer. Western sanctions have effectively handed resource-rich Russia to resource-hungry China. Beijing has also chipped away at Russian influence in Central Asia, bringing former Soviet republics into its orbit. Meanwhile, despite the grinding war in Ukraine, Russia remains a formidable power. Its global reach, military capacity and resilience under sanctions have belied Western hopes that it could be isolated into irrelevance. On the battlefield, Russia holds the strategic initiative, strengthening Putin's bargaining hand and reducing his incentive to accept any ceasefire not largely on his own terms. The uncomfortable truth for Washington is that it risks losing a proxy war into which it has poured vast resources. The legacy-conscious Trump recognizes this. His push for a negotiated end to the war is not a retreat but an attempt to cut losses and refocus U.S. strategy on the larger contest with China that will shape the emerging new global order. Among the great powers, only China has both the ambition and material base to supplant the U.S. Its economy, military spending and technological capabilities dwarf that of Russia. Yet Beijing remains the main beneficiary of America's hard line against Moscow. In fact, sanctions and Western weaponization of international finance have turned China into Russia's financial lifeline. Russia's export earnings are now largely parked in Chinese banks, in effect giving Beijing a share of the returns. China has also locked in discounted, long-term energy supplies from Russia. These secure overland flows, which cannot be interdicted by hostile forces, bolster China's energy security in ways maritime trade never could — a crucial hedge as it eyes Taiwan. Far from weakening Beijing, U.S. policy has made it stronger. A formal China-Russia alliance would unite Eurasia's vast resources and power — America's ultimate nightmare, as it would accelerate its relative decline. The Ukraine war has drained U.S. focus even as China expands influence in the Indo-Pacific, the true theater of 21st-century geopolitics. This is why the Alaska summit mattered. Trump and Putin seemed to recognize that improved ties could reshape the global balance of power. For Trump, the goal is clear: Reverse America's blunder, separate Moscow from Beijing and refocus power on the systemic challenge posed by China. Critics call this appeasement, but it echoes Nixon's outreach to Mao: exploiting geopolitical rivalries to keep the U.S. globally preeminent. Washington needs similar clarity today, not doubling down on a failing proxy war, but easing tensions with Russia while strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, where the stakes are truly global. Trump's tariff-first approach, evident in his punitive approach toward India, has already hurt important partnerships. Yet his instinct on the U.S.-China-Russia triangle could be transformative. If he can begin to pry Moscow away from Beijing — or even sow just enough mistrust to prevent a durable Sino-Russian alliance — he will have altered the trajectory of world politics. America need not befriend Russia — it need only prevent Russia from becoming China's junior partner in an anti-U.S. coalition. That requires ending the Ukraine war and creating space for a geopolitical reset. The Alaska summit was only a first step. But it acknowledged what U.S. policymakers resist admitting: continuing the current course will further strengthen China and entrench America's disadvantages. A shift in strategy is not weakness. It is the essence of grand strategy — recognizing when old approaches have outlived their usefulness. If Trump can reengineer the strategic geometry of the great-power triangle, he will have preserved America's place at the apex of the global order.
