Nickel(II) and palladium(II) complexes of the general type [MCl2{Ph2P(CH2)nPPPh(2)}] with n = 2, 3 and M = Ni (2, 3), Pd (4, 5) have been utilized as catalysts for the polymerization reaction of norbornene. It was found that the use of B(C6F5)(3)/triethylaluminium (TEA) in comparison to methylaluminoxane as an activator towards complexes 2, 3 and 5 gave comparable polymerization activities, and the system 4/B(C6F5)(3)/TEA even led to an extremely high polymerization activity of 107 g(polymer)/mol(metal) (.) h.