“…Our interest in mesomeric betaines [22] and their relationship to neutral [12a, b, 23, 24] as well as anionic N‐heterocyclic carbenes [25] in combination with the introduction of an energy‐based quantitative index of the ease of NHC formation from precursors by deprotonation (carbene relative energy of formation, CREF) [26] stimulated initial calculations which suggested that sydnone methides are interesting precursors for the generation of unique π‐electron‐rich anionic N‐heterocyclic carbenes. This index supplements other measures of σ‐donor and/or π‐properties of NHCs such as molecular electrostatic potentials (MESP), [27] computationally derived ligand electronic parameters (CEP), [28] Tolman parameters (TEP), [29] HOMO energies, [30, 31] calculated proton affinities, [30, 32] 1 J CH and 1 J CSe coupling constants [33] of precursor salts and Se adducts, respectively, and Huynh electronic parameters (HEP) [34] of Pd complexes (review [35] ).…”