The umpolung alkylation of silyl enol ethers with an iodonium(III) ylide proceeds under mild conditions to afford various 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds in high yields in the presence of ah alogen-bonding catalyst. Unlike typical transition-metal activation processes of such ylide precursors, which tend to proceed via carbenoid intermediates,e xperimental and computational studies indicate that halogen bonding (XB) between the XB donor catalyst and the iodonium ylide plays ac rucial role in promoting the reaction. The identification of ac ompatible Bronsted base catalyst enabled the extension of this method to enols generated in situ to give the corresponding adducts in good yields.Hypervalent iodine compounds have become essential in organic synthesis because avariety of oxidation and oxidative bond-forming reactions can be achieved with these reagents. [1] In particular, recent advances in the use of iodonium(III) salts have enabled the a-functionalization of various carbonyl compounds under mild conditions.I nt hese reactions, ac opper(I) catalyst [2] or as toichiometric amount of acid [3] is used to activate the iodonium salt (Scheme 1a). Compared with a-arylation and a-alkynylation, C(sp 3 )ÀC(sp 3 )b ondforming reactions [4] are less well developed, despite the utility of the resulting products. [1][2][3] We envisioned that the crosscoupling of an iodonium(III) ylide [1,5] with carbonyl compounds would enable C(sp 3 ) À C(sp 3 )b ond formation and provide 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds (Scheme 1c), which are found in av ariety of important natural product scaffolds or used for their preparation. [6] Many approaches have been investigated for the synthesis of these important synthetic intermediates; [7][8][9][10] however,t he activation of the iodonium ylide seems to be the most challenging aspect of such ah ypothetical reaction. This is the result of their facile decomposition, insertion, and transylidation in the presence of hard Lewis acids, [5,11] even though such reactions generally occur via metal carbenoids in the presence of rhodium or copper catalysts (Scheme 1b). [1,5] We thus focused on halogen bonding (XB), which is anoncovalent interaction between halogenated compounds and Lewis bases. [12] Although XB donors have recently begun to be used in synthetic organic chemistry as easy-to-handle organic Lewis acids, [13] their activation mode is mainly limited to the sp 2 -hybridized nitrogen atoms of quinolines and imines, [14] carbonyl oxygen atoms, [15] and alkyl halides. [16,17] We envisaged that the soft Lewis acidity of XB donors [18][19][20] would allow them to preferentially interact with soft electrophiles (Scheme 1c). Herein, we report the first efficient electrophilic activation of iodonium(III) ylides for which an XB donor was found to be effective.I na ddition, we have developed the first XB donor/Brønsted base cooperative catalytic system, which enabled the in situ formation of the nucleophilic component without deactivation of the XB donor catalyst.First, we studied the interaction between XB donors ...