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Back in 2022, having decided to leave the entertainment business only 3 years after closing on its acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T announced plans to relinquish its ownership of the giant media company and merge it with Discovery, Inc., to form a new, publicly traded entity called Warner Bros. Discovery.

Just like many of his peers, Michael Kopelman has found that the business headlines of the past have everything and nothing to do with the ups and downs of his finance leadership career.

Seven years earlier, he had been residing at the top of Time Warner\u2019s investor relations function, collaborating daily with its senior leaders to carefully execute the company\u2019s earnings communication process.

Kopelman tells us that things were pretty much business as usual until there came a knock on the door from an interested buyer.

\u201cAt that moment, the plan to stand alone was a better one that would result in a better outcome than pursuing a sale, as it was felt that there might be other acquirers down the line,\u201d recalls Kopelman, who adds that Time Warner held an Investors\u2019 Day event to more extensively brief its shareholders on the firmness of its plans to remain standalone.

\u201cWe really had to convince investors that what was being offered just wasn\u2019t worth it\u2014and that we could do better down the line,\u201d explains Kopelman, who notes that his efforts to advance the standalone mantra ended up putting him in regular contact with different leaders across the company\u2014including HBO\u2019s leadership, which subsequently offered him a strategic planning leadership role.

\u201cIt ended up being a great opportunity for me, as I finally got to step away from Wall Street and into an operational role,\u201d comments Kopelman.

Still, he was only a few months into his new position when AT&T announced plans to acquire Time Warner, which cut short his operational tenure with the media company.

\u201cWell, as they say,\u201d muses Kopelman, \u201c\u2018The best laid plans \u2026 .\u2019\u201d

No doubt AT&T management couldn\u2019t say it any better. \u2013Jack Sweeney