In recent years, metal complexes, in which both the metal center and the ligand play active and cooperative roles, have emerged as very promising catalysts, capable of activating and forming chemical bonds through nonoxidative pathways (i.e., alternative to the conventional oxidative addition/reductive elimination sequence). The key mechanistic steps usually include a reversible switching between the coordination modes of the ligands that are bound to the catalytically active metal center (Scheme 1).For example, metal-amide/metal-amine interconversion, originally described by Noyori and Ikariya, [1] led to the discovery of very efficient asymmetric hydrogenation catalysts. [2] Aromatization/dearomatization in heteroaromatic PNP and PNN pincer ligands made nonoxidative activation of HÀH, [3] CÀH, [4] and NÀH [5] bonds possible and a family of hydrogenation/dehydrogenation catalysts was established by Milstein. [6] Nonaromatic switchable PNP pincer systems have been proven to facilitate heterolytic bond cleavage and catalyze transfer [7] and acceptorless dehydrogenation/hydrogenation reactions. [8] So far, ligand-metal cooperation relies on a dynamic interplay between carbometalated and a-or b-H eliminated species in electron rich CA C H T U N G T R E N N U N G (sp 3 )-metalated pincer complexes, [9] as well as on keto-enol [10] or lactam-lactim tautomerism. [11] These systems established a basis for the design of mild catalysts for nonoxidative (de)hydrogenation processes [12] and chemoselective H/D exchange. [13] The examples are impressive, however, they provide only a hint of the real synthetic potential concealed in ligandmetal cooperation. Therefore, we strongly believe that further extension of this concept to new reaction schemes will eventually lead to the discovery of conceptually novel catalysis.Herein, we wish to report on the development of Ir III -and Rh III -based catalysts that are capable of promoting olefin hydroformylation through the unprecedented metal-ligand cooperating mechanism. In our previous work, we developed the Ir III PCA C H T U N G T R E N N U N G (sp 3 )P pincer complex 1, which forms molecular hydrogen by an intramolecular interaction that involves both the metal center (hydride) and a polar O-based ligand sidearm (Scheme 2). [14] The catalyst showed very high activity in the acceptorless dehydrogenation of primary and secondary alcohols. We also observed that the release of molecular hydrogen is efficiently intercepted by the presence of unsaturated substrates.Based on this observation, we hypothesized that the hydroformylation of double bonds may proceed through a reversed metal-ligand cooperating mechanism (Scheme 3). The hypothetical catalytic cycle is likely to include the following elementary steps: i) heterolytic nonoxidative H 2 activation by the species a through alkoxide ring-opening to form the M À H complex b; ii) migratory insertion of an alkene into the Ir À H bond, resulting in the formation of c; iii) carbonylation of c, followed by migratory insertion of CO into th...