The synthesis of spirooxindoles with a hypervalent iodine reagent depended on N-substituted benzanilide derivatives as starting materials. Reaction yields of benzanilides containing various N-substituents were discovered to relate to the cis and trans conformations of the amide bond by ab initio molecular orbital calculations at the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) and MP2/6-31G(d,p) levels, including full geometry optimizations. The relationship between the reaction and conformation of the starting material by quantum chemical calculations was applied to the formal synthesis of SR121463.