We herein describe a novel example of a palladium-catalysed asymmetric
allylic elimination leading to enantiomerically enriched dienes. The
use of chiral ligands such as BINAP or DIOP allows the catalyst to dis
criminate between the enantiotopic hydrogens H and H' and leads to e.e
. up to 37 %. Higher degrees of asymmetric induction was possible by t
he introduction of a chiral auxiliary (R) in the substrate (89 : 11 d
iastereomeric ratio). Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd