we selected the stabilized ylide ethyl 2-(triphenylphosphoranylidene) acetate, which gives the E isomer [23]. The results are summarized in Table 1. An excess of DIBAL-H had a negative impact in the yield leading to over reduction of the ester to the alcohol (Table 1, entries 1, 3 and 5). When considering the solvent, toluene gave the best results (Table 1, entry 6). In addition, only the E isomer of 2a was obtained. The (dia)stereoselectivity (within limits of 1H NMR detection in the crude reaction mixture) of the process was affected neither by the reaction solvent nor by the amount of DIBAL-H employed. It is known from the literature that some racemization of enantiomerically pure aldehydes occurs during the DIBAL-H treatment. Although we have demonstrated earlier that no loss of enantiomeric purity was observed in the synthesis of anti-β-amino alcohols [16], we submitted commercially available DL-alanine to the aforementioned one- pot procedure to give rac-2a. Both rac-2a and 2a were analyzed by chiral HPLC. The analysis confirmed that the enantiomeric purity was not affected by the process.