Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Hedge funds often measure their investments in minutes, not decades; but for Anchorage Capital Group, its long-held stake in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is proving that patience can also be profitable.The New York-based money manager stands to make roughly $2 billion on its investment in the film and TV producer, one that began almost 11 years ago with MGM in bankruptcy court. Amazon.com Inc. agreed to buy the company for $8.45 billion Wednesday, a price that includes just under $2 billion in debt.The deal is in many ways a vindication for Kevin Ulrich, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader who co-founded Anchorage in 2003 and was part of a group of distressed debt investors that took control of MGM as it went through the restructuring process. In recent years the stake looked to be an albatross for the fund, one that came with significant drama in its own right.Ulrich brought in and later fired a high-profile chief executive officer, resisted efforts by activist investor Carl Icahn to take control, and held out for a bigger payday after years of considering various exit strategies. By selling now, as demand for media content from entertainment and technology companies alike is booming, he’s proving his long-held faith in the investment was justified.“There was a lot of maneuvering, a lot of financial engineering,” said Steven Azarbad, chief investment officer at New York’s Maglan Capital, an MGM investor who sold his shares four years ago. “But they’ve done great.”A representative for Anchorage declined to comment.When Ulrich first invested in MGM, he was new to Hollywood. He helped pick Gary Barber, a South African-born producer of films such as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” as chief executive officer of the storied but debt-laden studio. Barber brought to the table a shrewd business sense, and connections into a world Ulrich long admired from afar.Barber shepherded MGM’s development of “The Hobbit” franchise, a co-production with Warner Bros., that became a global smash hit. He helmed the release of the James Bond film, “Skyfall,” which generated over $1 billion at the box office, and he revived the studio’s work in television. Barber also brokered a deal to bring on TV super producer Mark Burnett, which gave MGM access to reality show hits like “Survivor” and “The Apprentice,” but would ultimately become personally troublesome.In 2012 the company bought back Icahn’s stock for $590 million. It also filed paperwork for a possible public offering of shares, and considered other options, such as a sale.As Barber boosted MGM’s film and TV pipeline, Ulrich was increasingly entranced by the allure of Hollywood. He became a regular at movie premieres in Los Angeles and New York, and frequented industry parties in the Hamptons and elsewhere. He became active in creative decisions after becoming chair of MGM’s board -- somewhat unusual for a non-executive lacking Hollywood experience -- even getting involved with business granularities like casting.Growing RiftBut over the following years a rift began to open up between Barber and Ulrich. When it was time to renew Barber’s contract in 2017, Ulrich conducted an extensive search for a new CEO. When it ended, he ultimately chose to sign Barber to a new five-year deal. Yet around the same time, the pair split on whether to sell the company, with Ulrich wanting to hang on to the studio and Barber saying it was time to find a buyer.The company would hold buyout talks with Apple Inc. as well as Chinese investors that would ultimately prove fruitless.Only months after renewing Barber’s deal, Ulrich fired him. The shock departure meant the company had to pay Barber for five years of salary and buy out his equity, a package totaling $260 million. In the three years since Barber left, Ulrich hasn’t replaced him, instead operating an “office of the chief executive officer,” comprised of various people that each have their personal vision for MGM.Barber declined to comment via his spokesperson.Bounce BackAfter the initial period of success following the restructuring, the gains became harder to come by, as they did in Anchorage’s overall credit-focused business. Two senior managers left the firm in January 2020, and another in November. Anchorage’s flagship strategy, with about $8.5 billion under management, returned just 0.6% in 2018, 1.5% in 2019 and 4.4% in 2020, according to people familiar with the matter.In December, MGM hired investment bankers for a potential sale.MGM only released one film in theaters in 2020. Its biggest potential hit, the latest Bond film, “No Time to Die,” was pushed from last year to this October as a result of the pandemic.Yet the value of MGM’s library rose as everyone from media companies to technology giants have sought to build video streaming platforms that can compete with industry leader Netflix Inc. Earnings jumped 48% last year, to about $307 million, even as sales declined.Anchorage holds a roughly 30% stake in MGM, worth about $2.5 billion in the sale, said people with knowledge of the matter. Anchorage invested around $500 million in the company more than a decade ago. Including the MGM stake, Anchorage’s flagship fund is up 18% this year, the people added. The fund has gained about 8% in 2021 not counting the studio.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.<doc-sep>AN ENORMOUS lump of ice dubbed the "world's most dangerous glacier" is teetering on the verge of collapse, threatening to raise global sea levels by an unprecedented eight feet. Nasa has discovered a gigantic cavity under the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica that they say could destabilise the doomsday ice block and topple it into the sea. 5 The Thwaites glacier covers an area around half the size of the UK Its top boffins warned that the growing hole is already as tall as London's Shard skyscraper, and covers an area the size of 10,000 football pitches. As it grows, Thwaites will disintegrate faster and faster, potentially triggering a global catastrophe. "[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," said Nasa scientist Dr Pietro Milillo. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster." 5 A huge cavity has opened underneath Thwaites glacier in Western Antarctica Credit: NASA / OIB / Jeremy Harbeck 5 This graph shows what parts of the UK and Europe are at risk from a seal level rise of 5 metres. If Thwaites melts, sea levels could jump by up to 2.5 metres The gigantic Thwaites glacier covers 113,000 square miles – about half the area of the United Kingdom. If it melts, global sea levels will rise by over 2 feet, causing coastal flooding that will turf hundreds of thousands of people across the globe from their homes. But it's Thwaites protective effect on neighbouring glaciers that Nasa is most worried about. They say the ice chunk acts as a "backstop" that stops others around it from melting. 5 Huge icebergs that have separated from Thwaites are pictured above Credit: NASA / James Yungel 5 A close look at the Thwaites Ice Shelf edge Credit: NASA / James Yungel Without it, surrounding glaciers could all disintegrate, raising sea levels by 8 feet if all ice were lost. This would put large swathes of coastal cities underwater, turning streets into canals and completely submerging some towns and cities. Previous research has predicted that a 6ft sea level rise would leave large parts of Kent underwater, while Portsmouth, Cambridge and Peterborough wouldn't fair much better. Nasa found a huge growing cavity under Thwaites while examining ice-penetrating satellite imagery of Thwaites. Rising sea levels – what's the problem? Here's what you need to know... The global sea level has been gradually rising over the past century Sea levels rise due to two main reasons The first is thermal expansion – as water gets warmer, it expands The second is melting ice on land, adding fresh water into seas This has a cyclical effect, because melting ice also warms up the planet (and oceans), causing more even ice to melt and boosting thermal expansion It's currently rising at a rate of around 0.3cm per year The sea is huge, so that might sound harmless But rising sea levels can have a devastating effect over time Low-lying coastal areas can disappear completely, even putting areas of the UK at risk It can also mean sea storms and tsunamis can have a more devastating effect, reaching further in-land than they would have previously There's also an increased risk of flooding The research is part of Nasa's Operation IceBridge, which uses space snaps to track the effects of climate change. They say the hole is big enough that the glacier has already lost 14billion tons of ice in the past three years. Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. However, the size and "explosive growth rate" of the newfound hole surprised them. TOP STORIES IN SCIENCE BLOOMING Super Flower Moon will fill skies tonight – how to see stunning lunar spectacle RED AHEAD May’s Supermoon total eclipse has just happened – here's some stunning snapshots MOON & THE AAHS! The biggest and brightest full moon of the year will be seen today I-DENY Stop those ad-tracking pop-ups on your iPhone – how to block EVERYTHING in one click THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE Ex-astronaut Chris Hadfield reveals the truth behind UFO sightings BAD MOON RISING Blood Moon meaning - what is its spiritual and astrological meaning? "We have suspected for years that Thwaites was not tightly attached to the bedrock beneath it," said team member Professor Eric Rignot, a scientist at the University of California. "Thanks to a new generation of satellites, we can finally see the detail," he said. The results highlight the need for better observations of the undersides of glaciers to track how they are hit by climate change. "Understanding the details of how the ocean melts away this glacier is essential to project its impact on sea level rise in the coming decades," Professor Rignot said. The study was published in Science Advances. We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.<doc-sep>An enormous cavity has been discovered at the base of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. The void, deep beneath the surface of the ice, is estimated to be about 1,000 feet tall and could have contained around 14 billion tons of ice. NASA said the cavity is "one of several disturbing discoveries" made about the Thwaites Glacier—a 100 mile wide river of ice that is disintegrating and will one day collapse. Understanding the unstable glacier is important for future predictions about sea level rise. It holds enough ice to raise ocean levels by around two feet. Thwaites also serves as a backstop to other Antarctic glaciers—if they subsequently collapsed, sea levels could rise by another eight feet. In 2010, NASA started an airborne campaign to survey the polar regions. A radar was used to peer through the ice to see to the bottom of the glacier. Scientists have long thought the glacier was not connected to the bedrock below, and they had expected to find some gaps along the base of the ice. However, the size of the cavity came as a big surprise—it was about 2.5 miles wide, six miles long and 1,000 feet tall. Researchers estimate the ice melted in the space of just three years. Findings are published in Science Advances. "[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," lead author Pietro Milillo, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster. We are discovering different mechanisms of retreat." Scientists were also able to chart the rate of retreat and ice loss, finding a "complex pattern," where some sectors retreated faster with more melting than others. They found the "grounding line"—the point where the ice lifts off the bedrock and extends out into the ocean—is shifting. Thwaites' grounding line is currently retreating, meaning more of the glacier's underside is exposed to the water, increasing the rate of ice melt. The newly discovered cavity sits on the western side of the glacier, where the melt rate was found to be fastest. "On the eastern side of the glacier, the grounding-line retreat proceeds through small channels, maybe a kilometer wide, like fingers reaching beneath the glacier to melt it from below," Milillo said. He said he is now preparing for another expedition. The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration is a joint project between the U.S. National Science Foundation and the British National Environmental Research Council with the aim of getting a better understanding of the glacier and how it will respond to climate change in the future. "Detailed studies of the grounding zone and its specific regime of ice melt will therefore be critical to explore in more detail using numerical models, remote sensing data, and in situ observations to improve our characterization of the retreat of Thwaites Glacier near its grounding line, its rate of mass loss, and, in turn, projections of its contribution to global sea level rise in decades to come," the authors conclude.<doc-sep>
Professor explains exactly what the Thwaites Glacier is West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier covers 70,270 square miles (182,000 square km), the approximate size of Florida. The ice mass has been dubbed the “world's most dangerous glacier” as it holds enough ice to raise the world's oceans by more than two feet (65cm). And what is more, the Thwaites Glacier backstops other ice sheets with the potential to raise sea levels an additional eight feet (2.5m) if all the ice is lost. And in calamitous news for low-lying counties, NASA researchers have revealed the presence of a previously-unknown yawning cavity at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier. As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Pietro Milillo The chamber is two-thirds the size of Manhattan and 1,000ft (300m) tall – and growing fast. Nasa has made a series of shocking discoveries about the state of the glacier. Researchers expected to find some holes between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom, however, the size and “explosive growth rate” of the cavity shocked them. READ MORE: Mars MYSTERY: NASA probes strange impact crater on red planet Thwaites Glacier: The Thwaites Glacier: A yawning cavity at the glacier's base is growing fast NASA believes the cavity is big enough to have contained 14billion tons of ice, most of which melted only in the last three years. Eric Rignot, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) researcher and Operation IceBridge study co-author, said: “We have suspected for years that Thwaites was not tightly attached to the bedrock beneath it. “Thanks to a new generation of satellites, we can finally see the detail.” The findings illustrate the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers' undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change. READ MORE: Was Einstein WRONG? Scientists aim to disprove theory of gravity Scientist captures huge iceberg breaking in Greenland The cavity was revealed by ice-penetrating radar in the NASA study into connections between the polar regions and global climate. The researchers also used data from a constellation of Italian and German space-borne synthetic aperture radars. These very high-resolution data can be processed by a technique called radar interferometry to reveal how the ground surface below has moved between images. Pietro Milillo of JPL, the study's lead author, said: “The size of a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting and as more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster.” READ MORE: Scientists ‘REWRITE astronomy textbooks’ with black hole BREATHROUGH Thwaites Glacier: The cavity is big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice Thwaites Glacier: NASA's Operation IceBridge discovered the calamitous cavity The Thwaites Glacier is currently responsible for 4 percent of global sea level rise. The US National Science Foundation and British National Environmental Research Council are beginning a five-year field project to answer the most critical questions about its processes and features. The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration will begin its field experiments in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 2019-20. Another changing feature is a glacier's grounding line — the place near the edge of the continent where it lifts off its bed and starts to float on seawater. READ MORE: Hunt for aliens ‘only just BEGINNING’ says top scientist