[orthoformate]

I am wondering: Does anyone know a of reliable chiral auxiliary for β-ketoesters for use as nucleophiles?

I have seen literature for Pd(BINAP) chelating between the carbonyl functionalities (Unique features of chiral palladium enolates derived from β-ketoamide: structure and catalytic asymmetric Michael and fluorination reactions K. Hayamizu et. al. Tetrahedron, Volume 71, Issue 37, 16, Sept 2015, 6594–6601)

but I wanted to ask if anyone knew of anything better?

[kriggy]

I guess you could covert the ester into Evans auxilary or use some chiral N-heterocyclic carbene, guess it depends on the specific reaction you want to run

[orthoformate]

I guess you could covert the ester into Evans auxilary or use some chiral N-heterocyclic carbene, guess it depends on the specific reaction you want to run

I want to use the β-ketoester in a conia-ene reaction

[critzz]

By no means am I an expert regarding this reaction, but here are maybe two interesting papers?

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja9004859

The first one uses a Fe(salen) complex.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja507853f

The second paper involves a cinchona-urea ligand in combination with Cu(I)OTf.

However, these ligands are usually pretty expensive... and I figure you want to come up with a "new" catalyst strategy.
Maybe you could try Cu(I)Cl in combination with a cheaper BINAP-catalyst?

[orthoformate]

By no means am I an expert regarding this reaction, but here are maybe two interesting papers?

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja9004859

The first one uses a Fe(salen) complex.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja507853f

The second paper involves a cinchona-urea ligand in combination with Cu(I)OTf.

However, these ligands are usually pretty expensive... and I figure you want to come up with a "new" catalyst strategy.
Maybe you could try Cu(I)Cl in combination with a cheaper BINAP-catalyst?

Thank you, these are very helpful!