Transition metal -catalyzed carbonylation is one of the most straightforward tools to obtain fi ne chemicals intermediates from alkenes and other unsaturated products. Together with asymmetric hydrogenation, asymmetric C -C bond formation, and asymmetric allylic substitutions, the asymmetric carbonylations are among the most challenging homogeneous processes. Their potential is still to be made the most of, perhaps because of the complexity of these reactions where aldehydes, esters, or acids can be formed from simple olefi ns and enantiomerically pure products or enantiomeric enrichment of one of the products can be obtained when the transition metal catalyst is modifi ed with a chiral ligand. The most famous asymmetric carbonylation process is the Rh -catalyzed hydroformylation of alkenes, together with the Pd -catalyzed hydroxy -or alkoxycarbonylation of alkenes. There are, however, important differences between these processes, as the rhodium -catalyzed hydroformylation is of greater industrial interest than the palladium carbonylations. From the mechanistic point of view, rhodiumcatalyzed hydroformylation has been much more studied and understood than the palladium -catalyzed carbonylations maybe because of the stability of rhodium species, as well as the applicability of spectroscopic high -pressure (HP) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques for the study of the intermediates and the early application of rhodium hydroformylation in industry as " oxo " process. As a result, the last developments in rhodium -catalyzed hydroformylation led to a very good control of the regioselectivity to the desired product as well as the preparation of practically enantiomerically pure aldehydes. Palladium -catalyzed carbonylations, both alkoxycarbonylation and hydroxycarbonylation, have also been widely studied but present more issues to obtain Catalytic Asymmetric Synthesis, Third Edition, Edited by Iwao Ojima