Impressive applications of coumarin and pyrone scaffolds have been established in a wide range of biological areas such as antioxidants, antifungals, antibiotics, antibacterial agents, and diverse inhibitors. 1 Of these analogs, 4substituted coumarin or pyrone moieties have shown very interesting biological properties. In addition to their increasing significance, more diverse synthetic tools for the preparation of the 4-functionalized derivatives are required. In order to achieve the primary goal, a large number of intensive efforts has been devoted to exploring versatile approaches utilizing transition-metal-catalyzed crosscoupling reactions as they are recognized to be one of the most powerful tools for the construction of new carboncarbon bond. 2 Regarding the synthetic approaches utilizing transitionmetal catalysts, a variety of well-known reactions such as the Suzuki-Miyaura system with tosylate 3 and triflate, 4 Rh(I)-catalyzed arylboronic acid, 5 Heck coupling, 6 Stille coupling, 7 organoindium, 8 and triarylbismuth 9 have been accomplished for the synthesis of coumarin and pyrone analogs. In addition, both tosylate and phosphate substrates were utilized in the couplings with organozinc reagent. 10 Taking account of the easy accessibility of tosylates, we decided to investigate the possibility of the direct preparation of the corresponding organomanganese coumarin and pyrone reagents by the reaction of highly active manganese. However, contrary to our expectations, the oxidative addition of the active manganese occurred into the oxygensulfur bond forming enolate and sulfinate anologs. 11 With these results in our hand, we next applied this strategy to the preparation of zinc complexes utilizing zinc dust. From the practical point of view, utilizing zinc dust has potential merits since there is no need for a metal-activation procedure. Herein, we disclose an alternative approach to expand the scope of zinc complexes for the synthesis of coumarin and pyrone derivatives. We anticipated that a combination of zinc dust, LiCl and a catalytic amount of iodine would be suitable conditions. 12 As in the standard procedure employed for the oxidative addition of a metal into organic substrates, 2-oxo-2H-chromen-4-yl 4-methylbenzenesulfonate (A) was treated with 2.0 equiv of zinc dust, 2.0 equiv of LiCl and iodine (10 mol%) in dimethyl acetamide (DMA). The progress of the reaction was monitored by GC analysis. After refluxing for 12 h, GC analysis showed the complete consumption of compound A. Therefore, we assumed that the oxidative addition of zinc completed to afford a zinc complex. Next, the thus-formed zinc complex (I) was employed to the cross-coupling reaction with acid chlorides in the presence of a catalytic amounts of Ni(PPh 3 ) 2 Cl 2 . 13 The coupling reactions proceeded smoothly in DMA at room temperature, affording the coupling products. The 13 C NMR spectrum of the major product clearly showed two carbonyl carbon peaks in the range 161-163 ppm, corresponding to the carbonyls of ester. No keto carbonyl ...