An unprecedentedly thermo‐ and air‐stable Pd0 complex from readily available electron‐poor trifluoromethylated phosphine was serendipitously discovered. As detailed and comparative DFT calculations indicate, the stability of the complex is associated with unusually strong ligand–ligand noncovalent interactions. The unique stability and the presence of hydrophobic structural elements of the complex offer several practical advantages, which were exploited in catalytic Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions.

[reaction: see text]. An operationally simple and recoverable fluorous CBS methodology was developed. The in situ-generated fluorous oxazaborolidine efficiently catalyzed the reduction of ketones with high enantioselectivity and reactivity. The subsequent recycling of the fluorous prolinol precatalyst was achieved by fluorous solid-phase extraction.

A practical, cost-saving tagging approach is developed which takes advantage of the hydrophobicity of trifluoromethyl groups, exemplified by the application and recovery of a CBS precatalyst using tuned aqueous-organic media with minimum 50% water content.