Dedicated to Professor Klaus Hafner on the occasion of his 80th birthdayThe accessibility of functionalized Grignard reagents has opened new dimensions in organic synthesis.[1] One of us has previously demonstrated that treatment of substituted bromoarenes with iPrMgCl·LiCl provides a straightforward access to functionalized aryl Grignard reagents by brominemagnesium exchange.[2] In accord with the suggested mechanism for these reactions, [3] electron-acceptor groups have been observed to facilitate this conversion. We have now determined the relative rates of such exchange reactions to facilitate a targeted use of these reactions on polyfunctional compounds.The influence of substituents on the rates of brominemagnesium exchange has been determined by competition experiments. For this purpose, mixtures of two differently substituted bromobenzene derivatives have been combined with less than one equivalent of iPrMgCl·LiCl in THF. The ratio of the resulting aryl magnesium chlorides was then derived by gas chromatographic determination of the product ratio obtained after quenching with iodineThe relative reactivities of R1 and R2 towards iPrMgCl· LiCl can be calculated by Equation (1) Alternative ways to calculate k, for example, by substituting the absolute concentrations [R1] 0 , [R1] t , [R2] 0 , and [R2] t into Equation (1), usually gave less reproducible results, and are presented in the Supporting Information for comparison. In several cases, control experiments were performed to demonstrate that the mode of quenching did not affect the results (Table 1 and Supporting Information). The independence of the product ratios on the reaction time is evidence that the product ratio is under kinetic control, that is, no exchange reactions take place between bromoarenes and aryl magnesium chlorides (Scheme 2, Table 1, and Supporting Information). Furthermore, the exchange depicted in Scheme 2 has been excluded by treating 3-cyanophenylmagScheme 1. Determination of relative bromine-magnesium exchange rates. X, Y = H, F, Cl, Br, CF 3 , CO 2 tBu, CN. [a]