3.1 IntroductionHydroboration, the addition of a boron -hydrogen bond across an unsaturated moiety, was fi rst discovered by H. C. Brown in 1956 [1] . Usually the reaction does not require a catalyst and the borane reagent, most commonly diborane (B 2 H 6 ) or a borane adduct (BH 3 · THF), reacts rapidly at room temperature to afford, after oxidation, the anti -Markovnikov alkene hydration product. However, when the boron of the hydroborating agent is bonded to heteroatoms, as is the case in catecholborane (1,3,2 -benzodioxaborole) the electron density at boron is increased and elevated temperatures are needed for hydroboration to occur [2,3] .The development of a catalytic hydroboration process was aided by the observation of Kono and Ito in 1975 that Wilkinson ' s catalyst [Rh(PPh 3 ) 3 Cl] undergoes oxidative addition when treated with catecholborane (2) , Scheme 3.1 [4] . Subsequently, Westcott et al. reported the isolation of the oxidative addition adduct with the tri -isopropylphosphine derivative and its characterization by X -ray crystallography [5] . However, it was another decade before the idea of developing a rhodiumcatalyzed olefi n hydroboration process came to fruition with the fi rst examples reported by M ä nnig and N ö th [6] .The conversion of an alkene (1) into an organoborane intermediate (3) has made this a valuable synthetic technique, particularly since the development of enantioselective variants [7, 8] . They serve as synthons for numerous functional groups [9] and are often subject to a consecutive carbon -oxygen [10] , carbon -carbon [11 -13] boron -carbon [14] , boron -chlorine [5] , carbon -nitrogen [15] and other bondforming reactions, Scheme 3.2 . These and other approaches toward extending the synthetic scope of catalytic asymmetric hydroboration have been the subject of recent excellent reviews [16 -18] . Many metals including nickel [19] , ruthenium [20] , iridium [21] , lanthanum [22] , titanium [23] and zirconium [24] have been employed in this transformation with varying degrees of success, although rhodium has remained the metal of choice for transition metal hydroboration.