An o-bromophenylzinc compound, first prepared in an excellent yield by the reaction of o-bromoiodobenzene with zinc powder in THF, was found to be an efficient synthetic equivalent of o-phenylene 1-anion 2-cation in Pd(O)-catalyzed stepwise cross-coupling reactions, affording unsymmetrically 12-disubstituted benzenes with diverse substitution patterns and with a variety of functional groups. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.