In recent years, the use of transition-metal-catalyzed reactions have been an important and general method in carbonÀ carbon and carbonÀheteroatom bond-forming synthesis. [1] Among them, the rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric conjugate addition of organoboronic acids to electron-deficient olefins, pioneered by Miyaura, Hayashi, and co-workers, [2] has been established as one of the most powerful and convenient tools for the enantioselective synthesis of b-substituted functionalized compounds. In particular, excellent results were achieved in the addition to a,b-unsaturated carbonyl compounds. [3] However, despite the great synthetic importance of nitro compounds, [4] it is surprising that far fewer studies reported the efficient asymmetric addition of boronic acids to nitroalkenes, most likely because of the difficulty in controlling the reaction stereoselectivity.[5] In fact, high enantioselectivities were only achieved by the Hayashi group in the asymmetric addition of organoboronic acids to a-substituted 1-nitroalkenes using a rhodium/binap (binap = 2,2-bis(diphenylphosphanyl)-1,1 -binaphthyl) catalyst.[6] In other reports, [7] low levels of enantiomeric enrichment (< 50 % ee) were often observed with general 1-nitroalkene substrates that lack a substitutents. Therefore, the development of a capable catalyst system for efficient asymmetric boronic acid addition to nitroalkenes is highly desirable. Herein, we report our preliminary results on the rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric addition of organoboronic acids to nitroalkenes that lack a substitutents; high enantiocontrol is afforded using chiral bicyclo[3.3.0] diene ligands.In 2007, we reported our discovery of a new family of C 2 -symmetric chiral diene ligands bearing a simple bicyclo[3.3.0] backbone; these ligands were successfully applied in the rhodium-catalyzed enantioselective arylation of N-tosylarylimines and the 1,4-addition of arylboronic acids to a,bunsaturated carbonyl compounds under mild conditions. [8] Inspired by these successes, we wondered whether these rhodium/diene complexes could also act as effective catalysts for the asymmetric addition of boronic acids to nitroalkenes. In spite of the recent significant advances, there has been no report on the use of chiral diene ligands [9] in this field. Our initial investigation was carried out by examining the reaction of nitrostyrene 2 with para-anisylboronic acid (3) in the presence of chiral diene ligand 1 a (3 mol %) under the reaction conditions previously reported [8a] for the arylation of N-tosylarylimines with arylboronic acids (Scheme 1). However, the result was disappointing. The addition product 4 a was obtained in only 9 % yield, albeit with moderate enantioselectivity (40 %), and a large amount of starting material 2 was recovered. Considering the known catalytic cycle for the 1,4-addition of organoboron reagents to activated alkenes, [10] it is likely that the low yield can be attributed to poor catalyst regeneration from its rhodium nitronate intermediate in the hydrolysis step. Indeed, we ...