“…Our initial attempt to elaborate chiral diol 1 to the corresponding C 2 -symmetric lactam-fused pyridine 2 was to examine the cyclisation in the presence of an ammonium salt 12 (Table S1, Supporting Information). Treatment of 1a (R 1 = Bn, R 2 = H) with an equimolar amount of ammonium acetate in AcOH at 100 °C led to an almost 1:1 mixture of pyridine derivatives, 2a and its epimer, in 62% yield, whereas no reaction occurred without heating (Table S1, entries 1 and 2).…”