TheChek News Flow

Disney’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games values the Fortnite maker at $22.5 billion, a person familiar with the matter said. The price is about a 29% drop from where investors last valued the company less than two years ago.

The investment makes the “Fortnite” maker one of the largest private, venture-backed companies to sell new shares at a steep discount since higher interest rates hit tech valuations. Disney’s $1.5 billion investment will dilute existing Epic shareholders by 9%, the person said. The size of the investment would imply a roughly 7% stake in the company.

The Takeaway

• Disney’s $1.5 billion investment will dilute existing Epic shareholders by 9%

• Purchase price values firm at $22.5 billion, 29% lower than last valuation

• Epic’s other shareholders include Tencent, Sony and Lego

Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the deal on the company’s earnings call Thursday, calling it “Disney's biggest entry ever into the world of video games.” The companies didn’t disclose the valuation or size of Disney’s stake. Epic declined to comment.

The equity deal is part of a “multiyear project” for the two companies to create “an all-new open, persistent and social universe that will bring Disney stories and experiences to life, interoperating with Fortnite,” Epic said in a press release.

Epic expects its partnership with Disney to generate more revenue than the roughly $2 billion it gets from Fortnite annually, the person said.

The price Disney paid is roughly in line with where mutual funds such as Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Blackrock have marked their stakes in Epic Games recently, according to Caplight, which tracks the secondary market for private startup stock.

Few large private tech firms with high valuations have sold new shares at significantly lower valuations over the past year and a half, with payments firm Stripe and corporate credit card startup Ramp notable exceptions.

The Disney deal is the latest step in a winding financial history for Epic, which chief executive officer Tim Sweeney started in his parents’ basement in 1991. He sold a 40% stake to Tencent in 2012, and raised $1.25 billion in 2017 from KKR, Vulcan Capital and Kleiner Perkins at a $15 billion valuation.

In 2021 and 2022, Epic raised hundreds of millions of dollars from companies such as Sony and the parent company of Lego as well as financial firms like Appaloosa Management, KKR, Baillie Gifford and GIC, in successive deals that valued the firm at $28.7 billion and $31.5 billion, respectively.

A new exhibit at his eponymous museum in Paris chronicles his groundbreaking use of see-through fabrics to empower women.

Ciara in Dundas. Janelle Monáe in Area. Sabrina Carpenter in Paco Rabanne. Ellie Goulding in Zuhair Murad. Florence Pugh in Valentino, and at least half a dozen times at that.

The list goes on.

For all the talk about 2023 being the year of the sheer dress — a trend going strong into 2024 if Valentino, Schiaparelli and RVDK Ronald van der Kemp’s most recent couture collections were any indication — a new exhibit at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris uncovers the historical roots of the look that dominates today.

“Sheer: The Diaphanous Creations of Yves Saint Laurent,” which opens Friday at the designer’s eponymous museum in Paris, shines a new light on his groundbreaking work with transparent textiles and his continuing influence.

For his fall ’66 couture collection, Saint Laurent debuted his first sheer look in a dress of Cigaline fabric with strategically placed sequins. Two years later, he followed with a see-through pussy-bow blouse paired with a le Smoking jacket, and one of his most legendary looks: a sheer gown with an ostrich feather skirt. The top completely exposed the chest of model Danielle Luquet.

He was the first designer to “free the nipple.”

His designs were used as a tool for revealing the power of women at a time of seismic changes for the sexes. He played with the contradictions of the idea of clothing as something to cover and protect the body, and the revealing nature of the sheer fabrics. Saint Laurent reveled in the dichotomy, and encouraged women to feel powerful in their bodies.

Museum director Elsa Janssen noted that Saint Laurent completely captured the zeitgeist of the moment, and was in line with the cultural upheaval of those years. She noted that just a few years before he had been working at the house of Christian Dior when he presented another groundbreaking style — the trapeze dress. That look, which was a precursor to the A-line style, had a loose waist and lots of rigidity and volume, completely hiding the body.

With his sheer looks and strategic cutouts, he gave other body parts equal opportunity for exposure. An original sketch of a low-swooping dress which displayed the first few inches of the backside is presented in the exhibit. For another look, he placed a see-through lace heart scooped down over the rear. It’s easy to imagine each of these dresses on today’s red carpet.

The exhibit has some of these couture pieces on display, as well as some playful pieces from his Rive Gauche line. One notable piece from the latter collection is a cocktail dress featuring a sheer top with a sparkly cup-shaped embroidered detail over each breast, with a velvet skirt that reads “Je suis belle” (“I am beautiful”) in pink sequins.

Working with sheer fabrics put the female body front and center to show a rebellious femininity, and Saint Laurent saw his work as supporting women’s liberation.

“It’s also very relevant for the female fight, which is very topical today, especially when you see some feminist movements such Femen,” said Janssen, referring to the France-based activist group that organizes topless protests.

That also translates to what we are seeing on the runways and the red carpets. “All these female stars in the music industry who want you to see how they are comfortable in their own body,” she added. “It’s a way for the female to assume their body as a force.”

She said that the Saint Laurent brand still produces the sheer pussy-bow shirt today. “More than 60 years later, it is still important,” she said. Designers are still inspired by Saint Laurent’s work. “It’s a very exciting textile from a technical and creative point of view, because you can play with the body, but at the same time, you can also play with the structure of the garment.”

But any sartorial or political parallels were accidental in conceiving the exhibit, said Janssen.

“If anything, it’s unconscious, because you are looking at what is happening in the world. But I’m focusing on the talent of Yves Saint Laurent, and for me I’m coming from the contemporary art world so I’m looking at his garments as art pieces, so I’m always looking at one piece and making a correspondence with fine artists,” she said.

Works from other artists that examined the idea of transparency and fluidity are featured, including photos from Man Ray, sketches from Anne Bourse, a painting from Francis Picabia, and a performance video shot by the Lumiere brothers of dancer and choreographer Loïe Fuller swirling in a pink gown.

A series of Saint Laurent’s own drawings inspired by the work of Spanish painter Francisco Goya detail one of his strongest inspirations.

Forty garments are in the exhibit alongside original patterns and sketches, as well as hats, jewelry and a wall full of lace masks.

The exhibit will run until Aug. 25.

In an exclusive interview, president and CEO Roberto Vedovotto mapped out the strategies that have allowed the company, which celebrates its first decade in business this year, to become the second-largest luxury eyewear manufacturer in the world.

MILAN — Kering Eyewear president and chief executive officer Roberto Vedovotto is not one to look in the rearview mirror, but reporting a milestone 1.5 billion euros in sales last year and marking the 10th anniversary of the company in 2024 are good enough reasons to take stock of the path carved out so far.

Kering Eyewear was a pioneer in changing the business model for luxury groups with regard to the eyewear category, straying from the well-trodden licensing business model. Vedovotto, who was previously CEO of Safilo Group for 10 years, exiting that company in November 2013, remembers being met with much skepticism in the early days.

“People were wondering if we would be able to put together the manufacturing capacity and to actually make it work since the eyewear industry is very complex and had been super stable forever. It is an industry where nothing really changed for many, many years. And to do this, it took a lot of audacity and courage,” he said, crediting Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault’s belief in the project.

Kering Eyewear revenues last year climbed 35 percent, compared with 1.1 billion euros in 2022. Sales of 1.5 billion euros are wholesale, since the company does not have any retail store and has no plans to pursue this avenue, said Vedovotto.

Reflecting the contribution of Maui Jim, which was consolidated Oct. 1 two years ago, and the newly acquired scale, operating profit rose to 276 million euros, a margin of 18.4 percent of revenues, compared with 203 million euros in 2022.

Growth at constant scope was extremely solid in all main markets, and was driven in particular by a very strong upturn in Asia-Pacific and strong growth in Europe.

“The reason why I thought we could have done something different was that, of course, the eyewear industry is huge, it is underpinned by growing trends and it is very profitable,” continued Vedovotto. “Moreover, sunglasses represent a relatively accessible form of luxury and have one of the best conversion rates within the accessories in the luxury industry, representing a great opportunity for brands to attract new, aspirational clients.”

Pinault asked Vedovotto to follow three guidelines while internalizing the category: “Make sure it stays much closer to the DNA of each brand, guarantee the highest possible quality for the product, and aim at a selective distribution to make sure that our products are in the places where they belong.”

The results registered so far are “the best testimony that if you have passion for what you do, if you work hard, and you are very committed, if you work as a team, and you enjoy what you do, the sky is the limit. Of course, we need to always stay super humble and cautious as market conditions are volatile,” said Vedovotto. “We are confident that we can keep growing, progressing, and doing better for all stakeholders: our people, our shareholders, our customers, our partners and our suppliers.”

Sales in 2015 amounted to 10 million euros. The company has logged a compound annual growth rate of 87 percent since then.

Local chains and the “three Os” (opticians, optometrists and ophthalmologists) constitute the main channel for sales under license by brands managed by Kering Eyewear, representing around 50 percent of total sales in both 2023 and 2022. The company also cited a continued recovery in travel retail.

At the end of June last year, Kering Eyewear acquired French company UNT(Usinage & Nouvelles Technologies), one of its key suppliers in the production of high-precision components, a key step in the company’s industrial development and innovation strategy. This followed the acquisition of Manufacture Kering Eyewear — previously Manufacture Cartier Lunettes — in France in 2017 and the purchase of a stake in Trenti Industria Occhiali in Italy in 2019.

The acquisitions have helped Kering Eyewear grow, but Vedovotto outlined the three phases of the company’s growth strategy, which passed through developing eyewear for the Kering Group’s houses, followed by a partnership with Compagnie Financière Richemont, developing eyewear for Cartier and their other brands. The third stage, started in 2021 with the acquisition of Lindberg and continued in 2022 with Maui Jim, was to add proprietary brands.

Asked about future acquisitions, he said “of course, we always keep our eyes open,” but he added that Lindberg and Maui Jim are “quite complex,” and are in an integration and transition phase. “Our goal is to preserve each of their DNAs, and to invest to help them further develop, in order to make sure that we are able to meet customers’ needs, expanding them internationally and towards a much broader consumer target.”

For example, he said, Lindberg has been very successful in Northern Europe and Vedovotto believes there is the possibility to expand further in other areas, and to reach out to younger audiences. The same applies to Maui Jim, which is “extremely successful, very profitable, but mostly in the United States.” The goal is to expand the brand internationally.

Maui Jim just launched Collection ‘Ekahi, and its advertising campaign with global ambassador Evan Mock is aimed at reaching a younger clientele. “We thought it was very important to maintain the heritage of Maui Jim, and Evan was the perfect guy as he is from Hawaii, we share the same family values, but, at the same time, he’s also an international and very eclectic person, a younger talent. He lives in New York. He’s an actor and he’s a model. He’s an influencer, a skater, and a surfer,” said Vedovotto.

Maui Jim “has the best sunglass lenses in terms of eye protection in the world. I think this is a time when people want to make sure they live longer and better. And protecting your eyes is an important part of that. So we are here to try to make it better for everyone. I think there is a brighter future in front of our specific industry.”

Lindberg and Maui Jim are “very important because these two brands are the best in the market for prescription and sunglasses, respectively.” Lindberg, he said, “has been changing the industry because it is the first prescription frame fully made in titanium, making it extremely light and comfortable to wear all day long. And very importantly, there are no screws, which is truly unique.”

He touted Maui Jim’s UV protection, anti-glare, and anti-reflection as “something that does not exist in the market. On a day like today, certainly cloudy in Italy, you wear a pair of Maui Jim outside and you see colors, you see things that you wouldn’t see with another pair of sunglasses. And that immediately puts you in a better mood. And that is true also of course when you are outdoors, in nature or at the sea.”

The executive confirmed the goal was to strengthen the control of the supply chain and “have the flexibility to work with the best partners around the world in terms of competences, specialized in terms of materials and techniques.”

In Trenti, “we doubled the workforce and more than doubled the volumes that we produce, investing in improving the performance, making sure that we pay attention to the community, and that we hire additional people in order to make the processes better and more efficient.”

Maui Jim and Lindberg are complementary to the portfolio of Kering Eyewear brands, which range from Zeal Optics, Cartier, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga to Chloé, Alexander McQueen, Montblanc, Dunhill, Alaïa and Puma.

“I think that the industry has consolidated and that, going forward, there might be additional consolidation. Furthermore, I think this will remain a healthy industry, also thanks to a significant part of the business which is very stable: prescription frames. There is always a need for increasingly better products and the awareness on visual protection is increasingly higher as protecting your eyes is key, and going forward it will be even more important.”

He admitted the market in 2024 will be “challenging, the geopolitical situation is not easy. In Asia, I think that we need to be very careful, especially with reference to further growth of some of the main markets, which have slowed down. So we need to make sure that we keep offering the best product and the best service to our customers.” With the elections and the macroeconomic environment in the U.S., “we need to remain vigilant. And I think that in order to keep being successful, you need to have the best product, the best collection, and the best technical characteristics.” For these reasons, he said “we need to remain super humble, and to have our feet very solidly on the ground.”

Asked about possible dream projects going forward, he said, “I would like to keep performing like this. And we know that it is very difficult, given the size of the company and given the challenges around the world. But that’s what I would like to do.”

More sustainable collections are a key objective for the company, “focusing on reducing the consumption, empowering people, and fostering innovation. It’s really what we’re trying to do because we feel strongly about this. So for us, the three pillars of our company — Care, Collaborate, Create — are very closely interconnected. The best is yet to come, as my motto is never, never, never give up. I think that the real luxury that I have is that I’ve always been working with very supportive shareholders. And this is rare.”

Creditors question Adam Neumann’s plans for a WeWork comeback

The co-working entrepreneur has made a late entry into an already complex bankruptcy process

Adam Neumann’s skill at wooing investors and bankers powered WeWork from a tiny start-up to a continent-spanning co-working giant that touched a $47bn valuation before a crash that led to his abrupt exit in 2019.

This week, the charismatic co-founder reappeared, looking to convince a new set of financial titans to let him lead WeWork out of bankruptcy. This time, though, they expressed more scepticism about what he can pull off.

The news that the entrepreneur and his investment vehicle were publicly pushing WeWork to share financial details so they can evaluate a bid caught creditors by surprise. It has added to the chaos in an already messy bankruptcy process, where WeWork is negotiating with landlords to shed unprofitable leases.

None of the creditors, advisers and other people involved in WeWork’s bankruptcy who the Financial Times spoke to would comment on the record, given that they are in the midst of legal proceedings.

But few of them believe Neumann’s gambit gives him a strong chance of regaining control of a business that still dominates the co-working industry but is plagued with problems tracing back to his time at the top.

Neumann’s return has raised thorny questions for creditors — including his one-time champion, the Japanese investor SoftBank and its chief executive Masayoshi Son. It could also complicate a bankruptcy process that is draining WeWork’s cash reserves as it racks up legal bills, advisory fees and unpaid rent obligations to landlords.

“The issue I have with his approach is that not only has it not achieved what he’s trying to accomplish, which is us engaging in a process prematurely, but it also confuses his landlords,” one person involved in the bankruptcy proceedings said.

“He’s late, with very little plan and his timing is abysmal. And we’ve told him that,” this person added. “He’s just not hearing it.”

On Sunday, WeWork filed a preliminary restructuring plan consistent with the deal it had struck with creditors at the outset of the bankruptcy in November. The company said it had been aggressively negotiating or rejecting leases since then, slashing its annual rent expenses by more than $330mn.

People close to WeWork said it had no advanced conversations with Neumann and that it was proceeding with its previous plan to hand over a restructured company to creditors by wiping away nearly all its $4.2bn of debts in bankruptcy. But it is a common tactic for outsiders in bankruptcy processes to write a public letter in order to get attention from the court or other stakeholders.

Neumann’s overtures, including through his property venture Flow Global Holdings, have found some backers who see the potential value in partnering with him. Dan Loeb’s Third Point and Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group, two of the biggest names in the hedge fund industry, have held preliminary discussions with Neumann’s team about possibly backing his efforts, according to people familiar with the matter.

The details of their plans have not been fully sketched out to the creditors who have first claim on WeWork in the bankruptcy. But those creditors have drawn their own conclusions from their conversations with Neumann and his team.

Neumann, who left WeWork a billionaire as SoftBank took control of the struggling company, has proposed a $200mn financing, according to the letter sent by his lawyers.

That would help WeWork cover its expenses during a bankruptcy that has proved more costly than expected. But there is near certainty that creditors — and the company — will refuse the offer, even if they have a fiduciary duty to consider Neumann’s proposal if it could lead to the best chance of existing creditors recovering their money.

Such fresh bankruptcy financing could help determine who comes out in control of the business, given its likely seniority to WeWork’s existing debts. A long list of creditors, including SoftBank, King Street, Brigade Capital Management, BlackRock, Sculptor Capital Management and Capital Group, already came to an agreement last year with the company on how it should restructure its debts.

While those creditors may be loath to pump more cash into WeWork, they understand that extra investment is critical to remain in control if and when it emerges from bankruptcy. They have baulked at the prospect of giving that up to someone they view as an interloper.

One person involved in the process said of Neumann’s entry, “I’m biased but I think they’re bottom fishing and hoped they could come in and buy people’s debt for cents on the dollar and own the company through the debt and I don’t think anyone is willing to entertain that.”

Neumann has not yet proposed a deal to take the company over. But he has since last year sought information from WeWork that would help him decide if and how he could structure a takeover offer. The company has not yet played ball, according to Neumann’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel.

“Throughout this time, my clients consistently expressed their sincere interest in purchasing WeWork or its assets out of bankruptcy, and/or providing the debtors with [debtor in possession] financing,” they wrote in their letter to WeWork’s counsel.

In a world of hybrid work that should boost demand for WeWork’s product, they argued, an acquisition by Neumann’s group could bring value-creating “synergies and management expertise”.

Neumann’s lawyers added that the $200mn financing proposal was completed at the company’s suggestion, and that they had drafted a non-disclosure agreement so Neumann and his team could “continue working on a purchase proposal”.

WeWork has said it and its advisers “always review those approaches with a view to acting in the best interests of the company”.

Ultimately, it is likely that the proposed $200mn financing would be supplemented by an offer to buy some debtors out so Neumann and his backers could emerge from the bankruptcy in control of WeWork, people familiar with the company’s current creditors said.

“The decision [creditors] have to make is would I rather take the equity [in WeWork] and play for that upside or would I rather take the cash offer I’m being given [by Neumann]?” one person involved in the deal said. “2019 is still fresh in our minds.”

The vast majority of senior creditors have signed an agreement to work in tandem, and while it is possible that one lender could try to get out of the creditor agreement, it is highly unlikely.

One person involved in the process said landlords and unsecured creditors, who are likely to be wiped out in the restructuring, may welcome Neumann’s appearance simply to shake up a process that has been painful for them. This person noted that WeWork had not yet presented a business plan or a valuation of a reorganised company.

Even then, that is unlikely to have much impact, as these junior creditors have little sway over the proceedings that are unfolding in a New Jersey courthouse.

Neumann must also contend with the fact that at least one of the potential financiers he named in his letter — the hedge fund Third Point — has said its conversations about working together have been “preliminary”, casting doubt on whether it will prove an enduring partner.

Baupost told the FT it does not “comment on rumours or speculation”.

A successful bid, though, would not just return Neumann to the company he built; it could see him working again with the biggest of the investors he once charmed.

SoftBank, which has pumped more than $16bn into WeWork since 2017, has lost billions of dollars on its investment and had its reputation badly tarnished by its dealmaking with Neumann. While SoftBank joined a meeting with Neumann and Third Point last year, Son’s firm has not indicated that it is keen to go back into business with someone it settled litigation with less than three years ago.

SoftBank declined to comment, but one person at the Japanese group said it had tried to take an unemotional approach to the restructuring and has held conversations with several investors about recapitalising WeWork, noting its fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to maximise their recovery.

There is another option creditors, including SoftBank, are keen to pursue: a sale of WeWork after it emerges from bankruptcy. Preliminary conversations on that idea have already started, according to people briefed on the matter. But they are with other parties, and creditors do not believe such a sale would involve Neumann.

The San Francisco-based start up joins Google and Meta as one of the fastest-growing tech companies ever

OpenAI’s revenues have surpassed $2bn on an annualised basis, as the runaway success of its flagship artificial intelligence product ChatGPT puts it among the fastest-growing technology companies in history.

The San Francisco-based start-up’s yearly run rate — a measure of the previous month’s revenue multiplied by 12 — hit the $2bn milestone in December 2023, according to two people with knowledge of its finances.

These people added that the Microsoft-backed company believes it can more than double this figure in 2025, on the back of strong interest from business customers seeking to use OpenAI’s technology to adopt generative AI tools in the workplace.

The extraordinary growth is set to put OpenAI among a handful of Silicon Valley companies — including Google and Meta — to have posted revenues of $1bn within a decade of being founded.

OpenAI was launched as a not-for-profit AI research lab in 2015 but has become a commercial behemoth since it created a business arm in 2020. Its annualised revenue was $1.3bn as recently as October last year, according to The Information, a technology publication, but the pace of sales growth has continued to accelerate.

Despite ructions at the company in November, when chief executive Sam Altman was ousted by OpenAI’s board only to be reinstated days later, the group continues to capitalise on the AI boom it kicked off with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022.

According to Altman, 92 per cent of Fortune 500 companies were using OpenAI products, including ChatGPT and its underlying AI model GPT-4, as of November last year, while the chatbot has 100mn weekly users.

Consumer and business interest in generative AI — systems that can generate code, text, images, video and analysing information from user prompts — has skyrocketed.

A number of competitors, including big tech rivals such as Google and Meta, and start-ups including Anthropic, Mistral and Cohere, are also beginning to commercialise their AI products. On Thursday, Google announced its new artificial intelligence system Gemini, which users can access through a premium subscription of $20 a month.

Altman has said OpenAI remains lossmaking because of the vast costs of building and running its models. The spending is expected to continue to outpace revenue growth as it develops more sophisticated models. The company is likely to need to raise tens of billions more in order to meet those costs. 

“Training expenses are just huge, but that’s intentional,” Altman told the Financial Times in November.

So far, its biggest backer Microsoft has committed up to $13bn to OpenAI, as the companies forged an alliance that has put them at the forefront of the AI frenzy.

OpenAI’s models also underpin Microsoft’s AI Copilot, an AI assistant for enterprise users of Microsoft 365, its suite of productivity software including Office, Excel and PowerPoint, which has been rolling out over the past three months.

The start-up has a profit-sharing agreement with Microsoft on any sales made through its investor. While Microsoft has not disclosed sales or user figures for Copilot, the company said in October that 18,000 customers were buying OpenAI software through its Azure platform.  

In recent months, employees at the ChatGPT-maker participated in a stock sale that gave OpenAI a valuation of $86bn, roughly three times what it was worth last April.

Altman is also exploring ways to boost the supply of semiconductors, a vital commodity for AI companies seeking to build the latest models to bring down OpenAI’s costs. He posted on X this week: “building massive-scale ai infrastructure, and a resilient supply chain, is crucial to economic competitiveness. OpenAI will try to help!”

President won’t face criminal charges after lengthy report finds he was careless in keeping classified documents while out of office

President Biden was sloppy in holding on to classified material related to some of his most consequential policy debates as vice president, eager to show that history would prove him right, according to a special counsel investigation that yielded no criminal charges but is likely to add a new dynamic to the 2024 presidential contest.

Biden willfully retained and disclosed to a ghostwriter classified materials while he was a private citizen after his vice presidency, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and notebooks with Biden’s handwritten notes implicating sensitive intelligence sources, according to a report from special counsel Robert Hur, made public Thursday.

“Mr. Biden’s lapses in attention and vigilance demonstrate why former officials should not keep classified information unsecured at home and read them aloud to others,” Hur wrote in the 345-page document.

Biden aides have worried the revelations could embarrass him as he campaigns for re-election against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, who himself faces felony charges related to classified material he kept at his Florida estate.

Hur said in the report that he didn’t think prosecutors could pursue a criminal case against Biden over the classified material, in part because there were some innocent explanations for Biden hanging on to the material that jurors might find convincing. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report said.

A White House lawyer, Richard Sauber, said he disagreed with “a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments” in Hur’s report. Another Biden lawyer accused Hur of engaging in investigative excess, and said the report flouted Justice Department regulations in making detailed public allegations when prosecutors aren’t pursuing a criminal case.

“Over my career in public service, I have always worked to protect America’s security. I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that,” Biden said in a statement.

Trump and his supporters have accused the Justice Department of a double standard in treatment. “If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president. Joe Biden is unfit to lead this nation,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for MAGA Inc., a political committee that supports the former president.

Hur cited several material distinctions between the Trump and Biden cases, including that, according to prosecutors, Trump refused to relinquish all the documents in his possession, lied to investigators and sought to obstruct their repeated efforts to get them back. In contrast, Hur wrote, Biden immediately surrendered his to the National Archives and Justice Department, consented to searches of his homes, sat for an interview in October with investigators and otherwise cooperated.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., in August 2022 after more than a year of negotiations between Trump’s lawyers, the National Archives and later the Justice Department—and after Trump’s lawyers said all documents had been returned. A separate special counsel, Jack Smith, last year charged Trump with improperly withholding classified documents and obstructing justice by allegedly trying to have surveillance footage deleted that revealed how some of the documents were being handled. He has pleaded not guilty.

In his own statement Thursday, Trump said in all caps: “This has now proven to be a two-tiered system of justice and unconstitutional selective prosecution!”

The report in particular chronicles Biden’s apparent memory lapses as a factor investigators mulled. Biden’s conversations with his ghostwriter were “often painfully slow,” the report said, “with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

Biden’s memory in his interview with the special counsel’s office was even worse, the report said. He didn’t remember when he was vice president, forgot when his term had ended, or when his son Beau died, it said. Biden also allegedly forgot who his allies had been on Afghanistan policy and mistakenly identified one as an antagonist, the report said. “His memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him,” it added.

In a prime-time press conference hours after the report’s release, Biden expressed indignation over those passages, particularly the reference to his son’s death. “How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden said of the special counsel. “Frankly when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”

Hur’s team cast a wide net in trying to answer questions about how the Biden material was packed and handled and wound up at an office Biden used at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a Washington-based think tank, and in the garage of his home in Wilmington, Del., alongside his vintage Corvette.

Hur’s team interviewed more than 147 people as part of the probe and collected more than seven million documents, emails, text messages, videos and photos, some of which are included in the report. Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Hur, a former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Maryland, in January 2023 and promised to make the findings public. He received the finished report on Monday evening and submitted it to Congress on Thursday.

Biden’s private lawyer and the White House Counsel’s Office were allowed to review a draft of the report over the weekend, a Justice Department official said.

Hur traced some of the documents to Biden’s opposition to sending more troops to Afghanistan during the Obama administration.

As vice president, Biden had advised Obama that Afghanistan was a quagmire and that the military would try to narrow his options. In 2021, Biden ordered U.S. troops to pull out of the country, a chaotic exit that marked a tumultuous ending to the 20-year war and has left a blemish on Biden’s presidency.

After leaving the vice presidency in 2017, Biden retained materials documenting his opposition to a 2009 troop surge, including a classified memo he sent Obama over the Thanksgiving holiday that year, Hur said.

The materials were among those in Biden’s Delaware garage and home office, and were recovered by FBI agents.

In a February 2017 conversation recorded with a ghostwriter of one of his memoirs, Biden said he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” according to the report. At the time he was renting a home in Virginia, and Biden had stored his papers downstairs from his office, where he was meeting the writer, the report said. But the documents aren’t referenced in his book and didn’t come up again in additional conversations with the writer, the report said. Those factors are among others that would likely convince some jurors it was an innocent mistake, Hur said.

“The place where the Afghanistan documents were eventually found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware garage—in a badly damaged box surrounded by household detritus—suggests the documents might have been forgotten,” the report said. Among the collection of other forgotten items were a collapsed dog crate, a broken lamp, potting soil and synthetic firewood.

Biden also often took notes as vice president in National Security Council meetings and other briefings, and shared some information from those notebooks with the writer, Mark Zwonitzer, including reading aloud from classified entries at least three times, Hur said. Biden told the special counsel team that he viewed the notebooks as his personal property, citing diaries that former President Ronald Reagan kept, the report said.

Prosecutors also examined Zwonitzer in their investigation. The ghostwriter deleted the audio recordings upon learning of the special counsel’s appointment, but told the special counsel’s office what he had done, the report said. He turned over transcripts of the records, and the FBI was able to recover the deleted files, it said.

Zwonitzer, Biden’s ghostwriter for his November 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” didn’t respond to requests for comment. He told investigators he knew of the special counsel investigation when he deleted the recordings, no one told him to do so, and he didn’t think they contained relevant information.