PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 28, 2025--
Bureau Veritas, a global leader in Testing, Inspection, and Certification services (TIC), has signed the first global verifier agreement to expand the reach and impact of the Building Resilience Index (BRI). Under this agreement, Bureau Veritas will serve as a verification partner for BRI across key emerging markets in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia and the Pacific.
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An innovation of IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, BRI is a web-based framework designed to help developers, investors, and policymakers identify risks to buildings posed by natural hazards and assess, improve, and disclose their resilience. Through this partnership with Bureau Veritas, BRI users will gain greater access to high-quality, third-party verification of climate-resilient construction practices, expanding trust and adoption of the tool in vulnerable regions where business continuity is increasingly threatened by extreme weather and related hazards.
"We are delighted to become a Global Verifier of the Building Resilience Index. As climate phenomena intensify, it has become essential to integrate climate change adaptation into assets strategy. The signing of our global agreement with the International Finance Corporation marks a crucial step,” said Marc Roussel, Executive Vice President, Urbanization and Assurance at Bureau Veritas. “Bureau Veritas has a long history as an independent third party mitigating natural and climate risks. Our network of experts will add a layer of trust so that stakeholders can rely on Building Resilience Index to evaluate vulnerability and effectiveness of adaptation strategies, worldwide.”
In recent years, physical risks such as floods, cyclones, heatwaves, fires, earthquakes and landslides have posed major threats to business operations, disrupting supply chains, displacing workers and jobs, hurting productivity, and impacting insurance and financing terms. The BRI-Bureau Veritas partnership responds to a growing demand from businesses and governments for reliable tools that support risk mitigation, asset protection, and long-term economic stability.
“As businesses face increased risks to assets and infrastructure from natural disasters, the ability to assess and verify resilience is becoming a crucial element of operational and investment strategy,” said Diep Nguyen-van Houtte, Senior Manager of Climate Business at IFC. “This partnership with Bureau Veritas strengthens the Building Resilience Index by ensuring that more clients—particularly in high-risk geographies—can benefit from credible, independently-verified insights into the resilience of their properties, adding a new tool to their climate adaptation arsenal.”
By offering third-party verification through Bureau Veritas, the Building Resilience Index helps stakeholders:
This partnership builds on IFC’s broader commitment to integrating adaptation into private sector development and enabling practical, market-driven solutions for climate resilience.
BRI is funded by the Australian Government and was developed and piloted with seed funding from the Government of the Netherlands and the Rockefeller Foundation, in cooperation with leading organizations including the ARISE Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies, Build Change, FM Global, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, Miyamoto International, and Resilience Action Fund.
About Bureau Veritas:
Bureau Veritas is a world leader in inspection, certification, and laboratory testing services with a powerful purpose: to shape a world of trust by ensuring responsible progress. With a vision to be the preferred partner for customers’ excellence and sustainability, the company innovates to help them navigate change.
Created in 1828, Bureau Veritas’ 84,000 employees deliver services in 140 countries. The company’s technical experts support customers to address challenges in quality, health and safety, environmental protection, and sustainability.
Bureau Veritas is listed on Euronext Paris and belongs to the CAC 40, CAC 40 ESG, SBF 120 indices and is part of the CAC SBT 1.5° index. Compartment A, ISIN code FR 0006174348, stock symbol: BVI.
For more information, visit http://www.bureauveritas.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
About IFC:
IFC — a member of the World Bank Group — is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. We work in more than 100 countries, using our capital, expertise, and influence to create markets and opportunities in developing countries. In fiscal year 2024, IFC committed a record $56 billion to private companies and financial institutions in developing countries, leveraging private sector solutions and mobilizing private capital to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet. For more information, visit www.ifc.org.
Stay Connected with IFC on social media
Marc Roussel, Executive Vice President, Urbanization & Assurance at Bureau Veritas
Two former attorneys and an aide who all worked on President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign were scheduled to appear Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.
The Wisconsin case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive.
The hearing comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.
Here's the latest:
The fight over California’s new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip congressional House seats will go to court Monday as a panel of federal judges considers whether the district boundaries approved by voters last month can be used in elections.
The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been eyeing a 2028 presidential run. The lawsuit asks a three-judge panel to grant a temporary restraining order by Dec. 19 — the date candidates can take the first official steps to run in the 2026 election.
Voters approved California’s new U.S. House map in November through Proposition 50. It’s designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. It was Newsom’s response to a Republican-led effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump.
▶ Read more about California’s redistricting effort
Even though Republican Brian Jack is only a first-term congressman, he has become a regular in the Oval Office these days. As the top recruiter for his party’s House campaign team, the Georgia native is often reviewing polling and biographies of potential candidates with Trump.
Lauren Underwood, an Illinois congresswoman who does similar work for Democrats, has no such West Wing invitation. She is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue working the phones to identify and counsel candidates she hopes can erase Republicans’ slim House majority in November’s midterm elections.
Although they have little in common, both lawmakers were forged by the lessons of 2018, when Democrats flipped dozens of Republican-held seats to turn the rest of Trump’s first term into a political crucible. Underwood won her race that year, and Jack became responsible for dealing with the fallout when he became White House political director a few months later.
Underwood wants a repeat in 2026, and Jack is trying to stand in her way.
▶ Read more about Underwood and Jack
The Arizona Democrat is emerging as a crucial surrogate for a party desperately seeking to win back the Latino support that slipped in 2024 with the election of President Trump. His fall travels have included trips to New Jersey, Virginia and Florida, where he campaigned for Democrats who went on to win their elections. Strategists say Gallego is flexing his muscle as a rising star for the party while also laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run despite not being a household name like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It’s a role Gallego is expected to continue next year, when Democrats hope to break Republicans’ hold on Congress and counter Trump’s agenda.
“Ruben Gallego is going to be our not-so-secret, secret weapon,” said Maria Cardona, a longtime Democratic operative and member of the Democratic National Committee.
Gallego is among the Democrats named as possible 2028 contenders who had the busiest travel calendar in 2025. He stumped for Democratic female candidates in New Jersey’s and Virginia’s gubernatorial races and Miami’s mayoral race.
▶ Read more about Gallego
Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Islamic State group.
“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” he said in a social media post.
The American president told reporters at the White House that Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
U.S. Central Command said three service members were also wounded in the ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. Trump said the three “seem to be doing pretty well.” The U.S. military said the gunman was killed in the attack. Syrian officials said the attack wounded members of Syria’s security forces as well.
▶ Read more about the attack
Two former attorneys and an aide who all worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign were scheduled to appear Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.
The hearing on Monday comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who was joined by the other two defendants in his motion, alleged that the judge did not write a previous order issued in August declining to dismiss the case. Instead, he accused the father of the judge’s law clerk, who was a retired judge, of actually writing the opinion.
Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.
▶ Read more about the hearing
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as arrives on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, after attending the Army-Navy game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, in Washington, en route to Baltimore to attend the Army-Navy football game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
