The one-step transformation of aldehydes (1) into the corresponding methyl carboxylates (2) or nitriles (3) appears to be an attractive synthetic process. Although several methods have been reported for the direct preparation of 2 from 1, l or 3 from 1 with ammonia: they usually require large amounts of reagents, elevated temperature, and f or a lengthy reaction period. We describe in this paper an efficient procedure for obtaining 2 or 3 from 1 by means of ...
