A highly deformed [1,4,8,11,15,18,22,25-octaphenylphthalo-cyaninato(2-)]iron(II) has been synthesized, and found to show absorption bands which may be assigned to metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) transitions in the near-IR region beyond the Q-band in pyridine, due to lowering of molecular symmetry to D_2d from D_4h symmetry of normal metallophthalocyanines.