Press Release

GOLDEN GATE CAPITAL AND NORTH CASTLE PARTNERS COMPLETE $650 MILLION RECAPITALIZATION OF LEINER HEALTH PRODUCTS

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (May 27, 2004) - Golden Gate Capital, a San Francisco-based private equity firm, and North Castle Partners, a Greenwich, CT based private equity firm, announced today that they have completed a $650 million recapitalization of Leiner Health Products that involves a sale of North Castle's existing majority stake in the company. Leiner is a market leading store brand manufacturer of vitamins, nutritional supplements and over the counter drugs. As part of the recapitalization, Golden Gate, and a new fund investment vehicle managed by North Castle, will invest $263 million and will be the co-sponsors of Leiner. Leiner's management team retains a significant ownership in the company.

Leiner has leading market positions in store brand vitamins and OTC sales in the mass-market channel with products sold through over 50,000 outlets in the U.S. Several recent new products in some of the fastest growing VMS and OTC categories have become top sellers in the nation's leading food, drug, mass-market and club stores.

"This investment is consistent with our strategy of partnering with exceptional executives in industries with high growth potential," said David Dominik, a managing director of Golden Gate. "We are pleased to back the Leiner executive team being led by Robert Kaminski and look forward to a strong working relationship in the future."

"We view the new investment as a strong validation of our strategy to be the leading manufacturer of top quality, store brand vitamin, mineral, supplement and pharmaceutical products," said Robert Kaminski, chief executive officer of Leiner. "The new investor group will provide us both capital and strategic expertise as we move forward."

About Golden Gate Capital

Golden Gate Capital (www.goldengatecap.com) is a San Francisco-based private equity investment firm with approximately $2.5 billion of capital under management. Golden Gate is dedicated to partnering with world class management teams to invest in change-intensive, growth businesses. They target investments of up to $100 million in situations where there is a demonstrable opportunity to significantly enhance a company's value. The principals of Golden Gate have a long and successful history of investing with management partners across a wide rage of industries and transaction types, including leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, corporate divestitures and spin-offs, build-ups and venture stage investing. For more information, visit www.goldengatecap.com.