“…In every TM-catalyzed process, the activity of a catalyst and the proper chemoselectivity of the transformation can be extraordinarily affected by the ancillary ligands, which may enable the tuning of a reaction’s outcome. This is the case of widely used phosphine ligands, which are commercially available scaffolds exhibiting significant variation on their electronic and steric properties. , For instance, bulky biaryl-monophosphine ligands are able to promote unique reactivity patterns, especially in Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions, assisting the activation or the formation of C–heteroatom bonds. − During the course of our previous studies on processes involving Pd-catalyzed C–C bond cleavage of cyclobutanols and their application to organic synthesis, we observed that the use of a bulky phosphine ligand such as (2-biphenyl)di- tert -butylphosphine, known as JohnPhos, not only failed to deliver the expected coupling products in good yields but also produced the degradation of the starting cyclobutanol reagent. Intrigued by this observation, we decided to further investigate this curious behavior involving a 2-fold Csp 3 –Csp 3 bond cleavage (Scheme , c), the main features of which are discussed in the present manuscript.…”