The prevalence of phenol, thiol, alcohol, and amine functionalities in drugs and pharmaceuticals makes the protection of these functional groups a prime importance while carrying out reactions sensitive to such functionalities in a multifunctional substrate having one or more of these groups. Protection is usually achieved through acylation with anhydrides 1 due to the ease of deprotection. 1,2 The poor nucleophilicity of hydroxylic compounds, particularly phenols, ...