Nickel-catalyzed asymmetric reductive cross-coupling of α-chloroesters with (hetero)aryl iodides

An asymmetric reductive cross-coupling of alpha-chloroesters and (hetero)aryl iodides is reported. This nickel-catalyzed reaction proceeds with a chiral BiOX ligand under mild conditions, affording alpha-arylesters in good yields and enantioselectivities. The reaction is tolerant of a variety of functional groups, and the resulting products can be converted to pharmaceutically-relevant chiral building blocks. A multivariate linear regression model was developed to quantitatively relate the influence of the alpha-chloroester substrate and ligand on enantioselectivity.