Linearly coordinated gold(1) complexes often display short between the for-inter-or intramolecular contacts of about 3 mally closed-shell (do) metal centers. This phenomenon is termed "aurophilicity" and is considered to arise from relativisticHere we report the synthesis and structure of a new hexanuclear gold complex (4) containing three pairs of gold atoms linked by such short contacts. The ligand involved is bis(diphenylphosphino)methanediide, which acts as an eightelectron donor bonded to four gold atoms; the only previously known example in which this ligand bridges four metal centers is the mercury acetate complex [Hg,(OAc),{(Ph,P)C}-Wg(OAc)J ,1.[4' The starting complex was the dinuclear methanide 1 (Scheme I), first prepared by Schmidbaur et al.,[51 which is a suitable precursor for tetranuclear complexes.[61 Complex 1 reacts with [A~(PPh,)(tht)]C10,['~ or [A~(CH,PPh,)(tht)lCl0~[~] in molar ratio 1 : 2 in dichloromethane, displacing the tetrahydrothiophene (tht) ligand to give solutions from which the colorless air-and moisture-stable complexes 2 and 3, respectively, Ph,P W PPh2 H 1 ' C ' I 2 COMMUNICATIONS Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 1994, 33, No. 1 0 V C H Verlagsgesellschafl mhH, 0-69451 Weinhrim, I994 OS7O-OX33/94/OlOI-OOS7 $10.00f .25/0