The use of gold compounds as homogeneous catalysts for the conversion of many organic substrates is one of the fastest growing areas in organic chemistry today.[1] Among these transformations, the cyclization of ene–ynes is playing a major role.[2] We developed the gold-catalyzed synthesis of highly substituted phenols, starting from furan–alkyne systems. In this case, as in most of the common ene–yne systems, the first step of the reaction is ...
