Recent work found a similar change in speciation upon addition of chloride and a concomitant decrease in the Ni(I)/Ni(II) redox couple of 0.15 V. The authors hypothesized that lowering the reduction potential of Ni(II) increases the overall reaction rate. However, we found that the Ni(I)/Ni(II) couple was identical for [Ni(II)L2DBU]Br2 and Ni(II)Cl2L2 (E[Ni(II)/Ni(I)] = -1.39 V vs SCE), meaning a redox argument is not sufficient for explaining the difference in reactivity. Since the redox couples are identical, we are currently focusing our efforts on rates of other steps in the catalytic cycle (e.g. back electron transfer, oxidative addition, and transmetalation) to explain the increase in reactivity with chloride additive.