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Jay-Z will rap to some of Wall Street’s biggest names next month at the Robin Hood Foundation’s annual investors conference, event organizers confirmed.

The Brooklyn-born rapper is expected to discuss his business career, including his recent deal to sell music-streaming service Tidal to Jack Dorsey-owned Square. That deal also had him added to the financial services company’s board of directors. 

Jay-Z, who was born Shawn Carter, founded the entertainment empire Roc Nation and cannabis brand Monogram, among other ventures.

He also owns D’usse Cognac and is co-owner of champagne brand Armand de Brignac. Earlier this year, luxury brand behemoth LVMH purchased 50 percent of Armand de Brignac, popularly known as “Ace of Spades.”

Earlier this year, Jay-Z also launched a $10 million investment fund to help minority marijuana entrepreneurs break into the burgeoning pot business.

“We are especially excited to welcome Jay-Z, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of his generation, to speak at the conference. He exemplifies the visionary, cutting-edge investor that shares our stage each year to provide expert insights while supporting the measurable and sustainable programs Robin Hood operates to elevate New Yorkers out of poverty,” John Griffin, founder of Blue Ridge Capital and Robin Hood board chair, told CNBC.

Jay-Z recently sold Tidal to Jack Dorsey’s Square for a reported $350M.Louis Ascui/Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio and Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper are also scheduled to speak at the Robin Hood conference, which will be virtual and begins on June 16.

Other big-time investors slated for an appearance at the conference include Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, Starwood Capital’s Barry Sternlicht, Boaz Weinstein of Saba Capital and others. 

John Griffin, founder of Blue Ridge Capital, said he is “especially excited to welcome Jay-Z.”Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

The conference is a fundraiser for the foundation, which fights poverty in New York City.  raised over $20 million from investor conferences between 2016 and 2020. This will mark the first time Jay-Z has spoken at the annual conference.

The foundation says it has raised more than $15 million through its investors conferences since they began in 2013. 

Rapid-fire changes underway at newspapers sold to cost-slashing hedge fund Alden Global Capital have led to a profound case of the jitters at newsrooms like the New York Daily News.

On Monday, Daily News staffers were hit with the first bout of potentially bad news when they were told via memo that they had been spun off into a separate subsidiary of Tribune Publishing called Daily News Enterprises.

The baffling move, which doesn’t appear to have been replicated at any other Tribune paper, came the same day Alden fired Tribune CEO Terry Jimenez, the lone board member to oppose the Alden takeover.

Concerns were only heightened after Alden Global offered buyouts to non-unionized workers at the Daily News and eight other metro dailies, including the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the new owners had contacted the paper’s representatives at the NewsGuild union to discuss voluntary buyouts for journalists, but then canceled a bargaining session in the wake of its $633 million takeover.

Such moves have especially stirred angst at the News which laid off 98 people, including half of its entire newsroom back in 2018, under the old ownership. It’s now down to just under 65 newsroom staffers.

As one former insider put it, “What’s left to cut?”

The pandemic has whacked the circulation all newspapers. But circulation at the Daily News has plunged far faster than others.

And while local buyers had sought to buy other newspapers in the chain, nobody stepped up to try to buy the Chicago Tribune or the Daily News. Both papers have huge pension liabilities and experts say that potential new owners were skittish.

Any new owner is likely to be fearful of getting stuck with an enormous tab in the event the enterprise has to be sold or shut down.

Media Ink could not learn exactly how high are the pension liabilities at the Daily News. Several sources estimated they could be close to $100 million. But another said it could be as low as $20 million.

One reason for the range, according to some pension experts, is the potential for a pension shortfall compounded by termination fees and other penalties that come when a company tries to withdraw from a multi-employer pension plan.

In some ways the pension liabilities, while they discourage buyers, also may make it too expensive to close down since shutdown costs will likely exceed the operating loss.

“It is entirely possible, even likely, that it will be more expensive to shut down a business than to operate it at a modest loss,” said Harvey Katz, a partner and pension specialist at the law firm Fox Rotchschild LLP.

Daily News staffers were worried that by singling it out as the only entity among the nine major metro dailies to be spun off into its own subsidiary, it was being set up for a potential shutdown.

The facade of what was once Daily News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. The paper sold more than 2 million copies daily during its heyday. Getty Images

But Katz said if a profitable company were to set up one of its struggling units as a separate company, the parent company would still be left holding the bag. “Moving it to an entity that has only losses will be set aside by the courts,” said Katz.

Some of the most elderly pressmen and truck drivers go back to the days when the Daily News was the biggest newspaper in the country, selling more than 2 million daily copies and nearly 5 million on Sunday in the boom era in the 1940s and 50s.

All daily papers in the metro area saw print sales decline during the pandemic. But the Daily News lost readers at near triple the rate of The Post and double the rate of The Times. Its weekday print circulation dropped a staggering 33.5 percent to 67,983, down from 102,281 in the same period a year earlier.

Fred Drasner, a former partner with Mort Zuckerman who exited in 2004, commented, “Under 68,000 copies a day? They used to steal more copies than that from me each day.”

On the new ownership, Drasner said, “If they were bought by a ruthless cost cutter, I guess there will ruthless cost cutting.”

The News also enacted a steep price hike to $3 a copy, which has led to speculation that Alden, which had 32 percent of the stock and three seats on the Tribune board prior to its takeover, had been deliberately trying to crash circulation to justify abandoning print down the road.

Heath Freeman, now head of Alden Global Capital, at a 2011 event. PatrickMcMullan.com

Heath Freeman, the 41-year-old president of Alden, is the sole voting shareholder in the new company.

Daily News editor-in-chief Robert York addressed some staffers’ questions at a remote Zoom meeting Tuesday, but could not offer a reason for the spin off into a separate subsidiary, sources said.

York did not return emails seeking comment. A Tribune spokesman had also not returned calls.

In one of its last public filings, Tribune disclosed that Cerberus has loaned Alden $218 million in part “to finance the merger” of the formerly debt-free company.

Alden also controls newspaper chain Media News Group–also known as Digital First Media. Media News holdings — from the Denver Post to the Boston Herald and the San Jose Mercury — have also been hit with deep cuts in the Alden era.

To finance the latest deal, Alden’s MNG Enterprises, Inc. loaned $60 million to its parent hedge fund at the sky-high interest rate of 13 percent.

Calls to Alden Global Capital were not returned at the time of writing.

WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar — whose future has been in doubt since AT&T’s $43 billion deal to spin off its entertainment unit — will remain at the helm of the company until mid-2022, it emerged on Thursday.

Kilar has told staffers that he will continue in his current role as WarnerMedia CEO for the next 12 months, which is roughly when the media company’s merger with Discovery is expected to close, sources said.

Kilar, who only took the WarnerMedia job last April, made the surprise announcement Thursday at a celebration of the one-year anniversary of WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

Kilar, who recently became eligible for $53 million in cash and stock options, stands to pocket his entire annual $2.5 million salary and his targeted bonus if terminated after two years on the job, according to to AT&T SEC filing in March. His severance after one year would have included unpaid salary and a prorated bonus subject to performance.

“My plan and my focus is to remain here in my CEO role at WarnerMedia,” Kilar reportedly said. “I am not thinking right now about post-merger. There will be a time to consider that topic in 2022.”

“I believe we have unfinished business and the work of the next year can and should be extremely fulfilling as the world continues to see what we are capable of doing,” Kilar reported said.

WarnerMedia confirmed the news but declined to comment further.

WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar was previously the founding head of Hulu.Bloomberg via Getty Images

Prior to Thursday’s announcement, sources had said Kilar was negotiating his exit package following AT&T’s May 17 announcement that it would merge the entertainment unit behind CNN, HBO Max and movie studio Warner Bros. with Discovery, which owns TLC, Animal Planet and The Food Network.

Kilar even reportedly hired a team of lawyers led by entertainment powerhouse Allen Grubman to negotiate his final pay package. Grubman did not return requests for comment.

The CEO, who joined WarnerMedia last May, was said to have been blindsided by deal talks between AT&T CEO John Stankey and Discovery boss David Zaslav, who will helm the company when it is combined in mid-2022.

Reporters honed in on the uncertainty of Kilar’s future during a press briefing on the deal last week. When Stankey was asked by reporters about Kilar’s role at the new company, he said the decision would be up to Zaslav.

“David’s got decisions he’s gotta make across a broad cross-section of how he wants to organize the business and who will be in what roles moving forward in this transition period,” he said.

Zaslav called Kilar a “fantastic talent” but didn’t offer any insight as to whether he’d keep Kilar, who had previously served as CEO of Hulu, onboard.

In Kilar’s brief time at WarnerMedia, he’s made meaningful changes in helping build HBO Max’s technical platform, but he has also ruffled feathers, sources told The Post last week.

Kilar quickly led a massive restructuring of WarnerMedia that sent well-respected division executives packing, including chairman Bob Greenblatt and chief content officer Kevin Reilly.

The exec also shattered the theatrical window by sending newly released Warner Bros. movies like “Tom & Jerry” directly to HBO Max a month after they premiered in movie theaters.

Although the move was meant to boost pandemic sales, it rankled Hollywood. Top brass also grew weary of HBO Max’s slow subscriber growth, sources said. In the most recent quarter, HBO Max and HBO notched 41 million domestic subscribers, a mere 8 million subscribers gain from a year earlier.

President Biden’s budget proposal reportedly assumes that stiff new increases in capital-gains taxes took effect in April. That’s a surprise to many policy wonks, and some say the silence that has greeted the news is unsettling.

According to a Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal, taxes on capital gains for households making more than $1 million will skyrocket to 43.4 percent from the current 23.8 percent, effective retroactively to last month. He’s also planning to change the rules on unrealized capital gains held until death.

It’s the reported timing that was rocking the Beltway on Thursday. Optimists had reckoned that retroactive tax hikes are rare — as are hikes that take effect in the middle of a calendar year. (See the Clinton administration and World War I for precedents.)

But while tax lawyers and accountants are getting deluged with calls from stressed-out clients, markets have barely batted an eye. It may be that investors are clinging to the hope that it’s Congress that will ultimately decide, but the calm market response may be bad news for tax haters: A source close to the situation suggests the White House may be testing the waters by leaking the idea to the WSJ report before moving forward.

Key congressional Democrats aren’t ruling anything out. People close to top legislators say no decisions have been made but that Congress will likely follow the Biden administration’s lead. Political risk analysts are telling clients to watch Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Schumer and Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Richard Neal.

Analysts advise watching the actions of House Speaker Pelosi (foreground) and Senate Majority Leader Schumer (center) to determine if retroactive capital gains tax hikes will come to pass.Getty Images

“If any key Democrat directly or indirectly comes out and says we think it’s a good idea — then the market has to take it more seriously,” said Charles Myers of Signum Global Advisors. Myers adds he thinks the likelihood of retroactive taxes is greater than 50 percent but notes the Biden administration may settle on a lower rate for capital gains — like 30 percent instead of the proposed 43.4 percent.

The White House isn’t the only one floating retroactive taxes. New York state has proposed a tax hike that will be implemented retroactively to Jan. 1, 2021.

Still, others aren’t taking this news as well as the markets. “Biden is the most anti-taxpayer administration in history,” says James Lucier, managing director at Capital Alpha, a Washington-based policy research outfit.

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Last December, when a week-old hedge fund named Engine No. 1 challenged Exxon Mobil to change its ways, laughter echoed through Wall Street circles, from the fund’s name that recalled a famous children’s book to its tiny, then-$40 million stake in what was once the world’s largest publicly traded company.

Just six months later, the fund delivered a massive blow that rippled throughout the oil-and-gas industry. Engine No. 1′s campaign forced Exxon to accept new board members who could bring about a reckoning over its business strategy and confront the risk of global climate change that many investors say Exxon has long been reluctant to address.

Companies with a market value of $250 billion like Exxon rarely face, much less lose, shareholder battles. But stakeholders familiar with Exxon’s thinking said Wednesday’s defeat was years in the making due to ongoing weak returns.

Institutional investors had grown frustrated with the company’s approach to the energy transition, trailing global rivals who promised big spending on power generation, solar and wind. In addition, Exxon failed to recognize how the investment community had become more attuned to climate change issues, which helped Engine No. 1 sway big pension funds in California and New York to its side.

Sources familiar with the company’s strategy say that Exxon was late to mount a defense against Engine No. 1, and even when it did, it concentrated on the threat to the company’s generous dividend. But analysts had for months cautioned that Exxon’s hefty indebtedness could put that dividend at risk, making its warnings of the fund’s intentions less threatening.

“Exxon Mobil worked very hard to lose this battle” over years of inattention to climate change, said Robert Eccles, professor of management practice at Said Business School at Oxford University. In December, Eccles said he thought the activists had a chance to win a board fight.

Exxon did not respond to requests for comment. Company executives have said its scale and investment approach had weathered boom-bust cycles. In a statement on Wednesday, CEO Darren Woods said that Exxon has “been very actively engaged with our shareholders, sharing our plans and hearing their viewpoints and the key issues of importance to them.”

A spokeswoman for Engine No. 1 declined to comment.

ENERGY EXPERIENCE WANTED

When the newly formed Engine No. 1 announced its campaign in early December, Exxon Mobil was closing out a disastrous 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic that would end with $22 billion in losses.

Engine No. 1 saw an opportunity to push for changes to the company’s board, which until this year had nobody – other than CEO Woods – with experience in the energy industry, with arguments about Exxon’s spending and lack of an energy transition plan.

The fund’s top executives Chris James and Charlie Penner undertook a lengthy effort to recruit potential directors with the credentials to challenge Exxon, according to people familiar with the matter, eventually settling on four people all with energy experience.

The fund was able to tap into investors’ discontent to turn the fight into a climate referendum that cost the two sides at least $65 million. CALSters, the California teachers’ retirement fund, supported the campaign from the beginning.

Exxon sought to blunt the fund’s nominees by expanding its board and adding director Jeff Ubben, who runs a sustainable investing fund. It also sought to calm investors’ climate concerns by increasing low-carbon initiatives and lowering the intensity of its oilfield greenhouse gas emissions.

The company also reversed course on a massive oil and gas expansion program, though analysts expect it to pick up the pace of spending next year.

By April, however, Engine No. 1 was lining up more allies. New York’s $255 billion Common Retirement Fund announced it would support the dissident slate of directors, following California’s $300 billion teachers retirement fund.

FOCUS ON DIVIDEND

Exxon was taking the threat more seriously by April, but focused on investor returns, warning in a shareholder letter that Engine No. 1 wanted the company “to pursue a vague and undefined plan – which we believe will jeopardize our future and your dividend.”

The company has long prized its dividend, which during pandemic-driven oil price lows grew to a yield of more than 10%. With the company’s debt load rising to more than $69 billion last year, analysts raised frequent questions about whether the dividend could be maintained as Exxon was being encouraged to cut costs.

“The biggest surprise to Exxon was how the ‘defend the returns’ strategy did not work,” said one source familiar with the company’s thinking.

The tide turned further against Exxon on May 14 after two near-simultaneous events. First was the release of a damning report from influential shareholder advisory firm ISS that criticized the company’s failure to adjust its spending plans.

“Investors have regularly highlighted concerns about preparedness for an energy transition, yet the board did not take action decisive enough to prompt recognition from the market until after launch of the dissident’s campaign,” ISS said.

That was followed by a television appearance from Woods on CNBC, where investors said he looked unprepared for host David Faber’s questions about the ISS report, Exxon’s strategy and the board’s lack of energy experience.

Exxon for years banked on the company’s size and steady dividend to blunt investor criticism, even as it made a series of risky investments such as its purchase of XTO Energy ahead of a sharp decline in natural gas prices and a 2017 purchase of Texas shale properties as oil prices were slipping.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, in a statement on Wednesday, said the fund for years wanted assurance that Exxon’s board took the climate crisis seriously “and was acting to put the company on a path to succeed in the low carbon economy, and for years received platitudes and gaslighting in response.”

Blackrock Inc (BLK.N), the world’s largest asset manager, which supported three of four dissident nominees, said in a statement on Wednesday that Exxon invested just $10.4 billion on lower-carbon energy technologies in the last 20 years, compared with more than $20 billion in overall expenditures in 2020 alone.

On Wednesday, the company recessed its annual general meeting for an hour, as it continued to count votes. Woods then answered pre-selected questions from investors for 40 minutes, far more than the previous year’s annual meeting.

Among the questions was one about an International Energy Agency report that warned that investors should not fund new fossil fuel supply projects beyond this year if the world wants to reach net zero emissions by mid-century. Woods, however, said that “if you look at the report, it outlines the continued need for investment in oil and gas.”