Recently, samarium metal, its salts and organosamarium compounds have been widely employed as useful reagents or catalysts in organic synthesis.1 Since the pioneering studies by Kagan2 and co-workers demonstrated the particular effective- ness of SmI2, which is a powerful single-electron transfer reduc- tant in the lanthanide series, the utilisation of SmI2 in synthetic organic chemistry has been dramatically documented.3 The ver- satility of SmI2 is ...