New chiral ligands. including bi- and tridentate thiazoline derivatives, analogues of known oxazolines, have been synthesized by it general and convenient procedure. starting from dithioesters and commercial enantiopure 2-aminoalcohols. A preliminary Lest shows the ability of such ligands to act as asymmetric catalysts in Pd-catalyzed allylic substitution reaction. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.