Dedicated to Professor Wolfgang A. Herrmann on the occasion of his 60th birthday Noteworthy efforts have been devoted to the development of efficient catalytic asymmetric reductions employing benign and environmentally available biometals such as iron, zinc, and copper. The preparation of enantiomerically pure secondary alcohols is of special significance because these intermediates constitute valuable building blocks for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and advanced materials.[1] Catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation of prochiral ketones is the most direct route to optically active alcohols, [2] however, hydrosilylation of carbon-carbon and carbonheteroatom bonds is a promising alternative to asymmetric hydrogenation because of the mild conditions and operational simplicity.[3]The earliest reports on hydrosilylation appeared three decades ago, [4] and known asymmetric hydrosilylations of prochiral ketones rely on precious metals such as rhodium, [5] ruthenium, [6] and iridium. [7] Less expensive metals such as titanium, [8] zinc, [9] tin, [10] and copper [11] have also been explored. Each method has its virtues as well as its limitations. The limitations include either the cost of the metal catalyst, the toxicity of the residual metal in the product, the operational difficulties (e.g. low temperatures ranging from À50 to À70 8C), or the use of complex ligand systems.Recently, we started a program to develop more sustainable catalysts by replacing precious metals with nonprecious metals. In accord with the concept of "cheap metals for noble tasks", [12] the possible uses of iron catalysts are especially attractive.[13] Iron is the second most abundant metal available and plays an important role in biology.[14] Despite the many advantages and recent attention [15] to iron catalysis, it remains undeveloped compared to other transition metals (e.g. Ru, Rh, Pd, and Ir etc.), particularly in the field of asymmetric catalysis. To the best of our knowledge there is only one report by Nishiyama ând Furuta [16] on the development of iron-catalyzed asymmetric hydrosilylation. They used multidentate nitrogen ligands and reported enantioselectivities of up to 79 %. The scope of this work can be expanded; herein, we disclose our results on an improved and general ironcatalyzed asymmetric hydrosilylation of ketones (Table 1).Our recent study on the hydrosilylation of aldehydes revealed that Fe(OAc) 2 in the presence of electron-rich phosphine ligands and hydrosilanes forms an active catalyst.[17] On the basis of these findings we turned our attention to the asymmetric reduction of ketones.Initially, several chiral ligands were tested for the reduction of acetophenone to 1-phenylethanol by using a given set of conditions and selected phosphines (Table 1 and Figure 1). Privileged ligands such as (S)-2,2'-bis(diphenyl-, (S,S)-l-benzyl-3,4-bis-(diphenylphosphino)pyrrolidine ((S,S)-deguphos), and binaphthyl derived systems, such as L1 and L2, gave good to excellent conversions of acetophenone (68-99 %), but poor enan...