Nikkei 225 falls victim to American barrier in Meteor's Prima Growth Plan

Meteor Asset Management issued the Prima Growth Plan in 2007, a six-year worst-of product linked to the FTSE 100 and the Nikkei 225. The Japanese benchmark breached the 50% barrier and capital was lost

Meteor Asset Management launched this plan in May 2007. It is a typical ‘worst-of' autocall product and is linked to the performance of the FTSE 100 and Nikkei 225 indexes. The product featured annual kickout dates and would have been called and matured early if both indexes had been higher than their starting level on the strike date, paying a return of 13% per annum (not compounded).

In our original assessment of the product, we noted that the choice of indexes was likely to be due to the low