The reductive coupling between a carbonyl and an organic halide with samarium diiodide produces the corresponding alcohol efficiently, as first shown by Kagan et al. in their introductory paper on SmI2. 1 It was also shown by several groups that these reactions did not proceed well when the carbonyl compounds were added subsequently to the halides and SmI2. 1, 2 A subset of these reactions, namely the samarium (II) iodide-mediated ...
