Dedicated to the memory of Professor Luigi M. VenanziThe novel bulky diphosphite (P P) ligands (3 and 4) based on the 2, 7,9,9-tetramethyl-9H-xanthene-4,5diol (2) backbone were investigated in the Rh-catalyzed hydroformylation of oct-1-ene, styrene, and (E)-oct-2ene. These diphosphites gave rise to very active and selective catalysts for the hydroformylation of oct-1-ene to nonanal with average rates b 10000 (mol aldehyde)(mol Rh) À1 h À1 (P(CO/H 2 ) 20 bar, T 808, [Rh] 1 mm) and maximum selectivities of 79% for the linear product. Relatively high selectivities towards the linear aldehyde (up to 70%, linear/branched up to 2.3) but very high activities (up to 39000 (mol aldehyde)(mol Rh) À1 h À1 ) were observed for the hydroformylation of styrene in the presence of these bidentate ligands (P(CO/ H 2 ) 2 ± 10 bar, T 1208, [Rh] 0.2 mm). Remarkable activities (up to 980 (mol aldehyde)(mol Rh) À1 h À1 ) were achieved with these diphosphites for the hydroformylation of (E)-oct-2-ene with selectivities for the linear product of 74% (l/b up to 2.8, P(CO/H 2 ) 2 bar, T 1208, [Rh] 1 mm). A detailed study of the solution structure of the catalyst under catalytic conditions was performed by NMR and high-pressure FT-IR. The spectroscopic data revealed that under hydroformylation conditions, the bidentate ligands rapidly formed stable, well-defined catalysts with the structure [RhH(CO) 2 (P P)]. All the ligands showed a preference for an equatorial-apical (ea) coordination mode in the trigonal bipyramidal Rh-complexes, indicating that a bisequatorial (ee) coordination is not a prerequisite for highly selective catalysts.