A metal-promoted degradation of 2-azetidinones to afford CC'N-pincer ligands is reported. The hexahydride complex OsH6((PPr3)-Pr-i)(2) (1) reacts with (+/-)-cis-1-(4-methoxyphenyl)-3-phenoxy-4-(pyridin-2-yl)azetidin-2-one (I), (+/-)-cis-1-(4-methoxyphenyl)-3-phenoxy-4-(isoquinolin-2-yl)azetidin-2-one (II), and (+/-)-cis-1-(4-methoxyphenyl)-3-phenoxy-4-(quinolin-2-yl)azetidin-2-one (III) to give the respective OsH2((PPr3)-Pr-i)(2-)(CC'N) (2-4) complexes, which add HBF4 center dot OEt2 to yield [OsH2(PiPr(3))(2)(CC"N)]BF4 (5-7). These salts are the result of the addition of the proton of the acid to the dianionic CC'N-pincer ligand. The hydride ligands of these compounds undergo quantum mechanical exchange coupling, which has been experimentally quantified according to a two-dimensional harmonic oscillator model, where J(ex) is determined by the separation between the hydrides, their hard sphere radius, and a nu parameter describing the H-M-H vibrational wag mode allowing the movement along the H-H vector. The comparison of the results reveals that the phenomenon is particularly intense for 5-7. Furthermore, in these compounds, the separation between the hydrides is similar to 0.1 angstrom shorter than in the respective neutral species 2-4, whereas the hydride hard sphere radius increases by similar to 10%, and the nu value decreases by nu 20%.