Dedicated to Professor Giambattista Consiglio, a good friend and excellent chemist, for his remarkable contributions to the advancement of stereoselective catalysis A range of a,b-unsaturated acids and esters have been selectively reduced to the corresponding saturated acid derivatives by hydrogen transfer. As the reducing agent, formic acid was used in the presence of Rh I complexes formed with the powerful chiral ligand Ph-binepine (1), an axially chiral binaphthalenetype monodentate P-donor ligand. Very high stereoselectivities (up to 97% ee) were obtained in the case of itaconic acid (2a).Introduction. -The reduction of unsaturated functional groups by means of transition-metal-mediated hydrogen transfer from a suitable hydrogen donor such as i-PrOH or HCOOH has experienced increasing success over the last years [1]. This mild methodology represents a viable alternative to catalytic hydrogenation by molecular H 2 due to its operational simplicity and reduction of the risks associated with the use of an easily inflammable gas of high diffusibility. Significant advances in this area have been achieved in the asymmetric reduction of ketones and imines with catalysts of excellent activity/selectivity based on Ru and Rh complexes with monotosyl-substituted diamines or amino alcohols as chiral modifiers [1a].Less efforts have been devoted to the transfer hydrogenation of C=C bonds. Although this process is thermodynamically favored, even when alcohols are used as H-donors, only the reduction of conjugated C=C bonds is of practical significance, while simple alkenes and dienes are poorly reactive. A perusal of the literature shows that transfer hydrogenation of conjugated acid derivatives such as itaconic acid and a-(acetamido)cinnamic acid selectively takes place at the C=C bond, and stereoselectivities higher than 90% can be sometimes attained in this reaction when performed in the presence of Ru [2] or Rh complexes [3] with chiral bidentate diphosphines such as binap [2], bppm [3a -f], or deguphos [3g]. No example of the application of monodentate phosphines as chiral inducers in this reaction has been reported thus far, in spite of the excellent performances displayed by binaphthalene-templated monoA C H T U N G T R E N N U N G dentate P-ligands [4], such as phosphonites [5], phosphites [6], and phosphoramidites [7], in the Rh-catalyzed hydrogenation of a wide variety of substrates.