From Staff Reports

BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. — Summer Road, LLC, an investment firm managing wealth for the Sackler family (former owners of of OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma), successfully won a seat on the Ingles Markets board during the company’s April 30 annual meeting here.

Specifically, Summer Road successfully elected Rory Held to the board of directors of Ingles Markets, a regional grocery chain based in Black Mountain. Held, who is Summer Road’s chief investment officer, was appointed as a Class A shareholder in the company.

During the annual meeting, investors sided with the analysts. Held was elected with support from approximately 62 percent of outstanding Class A shares, Summer Road said in a April 30 news release. It represented approximately 70 percent of the votes cast, Summer Road noted in the release.

Ingles nominee Dwight Jacobs, a former executive with Duke Energy, was also elected to become a Class A shareholder.

 Ingles aggressively opposed Held’s nomination, calling it potentially “value destructive” due to the company’s links to the Sackler family. The company backed two other candidates supported by its Class B investors.

Despite Ingles’ concerns, independent proxy analysts sided with the Summer Road candidate. One of the largest proxy firms, Institutional Shareholder Services, called Ingles a “quintessential example of a public company managed as if it were a private enterprise” and said the company’s board had been “complicit in disenfranchising Class A shareholders.”

The victory followed a heated proxy battle during which Ingles argued the association with the opioid-linked family would ruin its reputation, but shareholders supported Summer Road’s call for better real estate management and less board “rubber-stamping.”

Ingles aggressively opposed Held’s nomination, calling it potentially “value destructive” due to the company’s links to the Sackler family. The company backed two other candidates supported by its Class B investors.

As the election approached, Ingles had doubled down on its argument, stating in news releases and presentations that the Sackler family office nomination would lead to a decline in sales and even boycotts. Summer Road described Ingles’ arguments as “a clear intimidation tactic that is unrelated to the merits of electing an independent director and confirms that the board had no interest in good-faith settlement discussions.”

Despite Ingles’ concerns, independent proxy analysts sided with the Summer Road candidate. One of the largest proxy firms, Institutional Shareholder Services, called Ingles a “quintessential example of a public company managed as if it were a private enterprise” and said the company’s board had been “complicit in disenfranchising Class A shareholders.”

Held, who, throughout the nomination process, said he has never worked for Purdue Pharma, noted the following afterward in a news release: 

"We would like to thank our fellow shareholders for their support and engagement throughout this campaign, and I look forward to continuing that dialogue as a director. 

“Today's election represents a clear mandate from Class A shareholders that change is needed at Ingles.

"I am now fully focused on putting the proxy contest behind me and working collaboratively together with the other members of the Ingles Board to improve the Company’s transparency and instill better oversight of capital allocation.”

Summer Road is the asset management firm of the billionaire former Purdue Pharma owners, the Sackler Family. For their role in creating and distributing OxyContin, Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family have been sued thousands of times, leading to settlements worth billions. From 1999-2023, approximately 806,000 people died from an opioid overdose, according to the CDC. Those deaths include overdose deaths involving prescription and illegal opioids.