In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy

Can someone please tell me if adjective can modify the ''Ing'' form of noun. Such as in below question can ''richly'' modify ''profiting'' or it can only modify ''profit''?

I chose (E) because of the parallelism and the correct usage of noun. Just out of curiosity, if answer (A) is:

by using the companies' earnings and to profit

would that be correct as well?

Hello YZLIM1994,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your question, your altered version of Optin A is grammatically correct, but it is still inferior to Option E, as it is less concise.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

In a leveraged buyout, investors borrow huge sums of money to buy companies, hoping to pay off the debt by using the company's earnings and to profit richly by the later resale of the companies or their divisions.

Option Elimination -

(A) by using the company's earnings and to profit - We need the plural "companies' ." Moreover, hoping "to pay" parallels "to profit."
Pay + with is commonly used when specifying a payment method, as in this question. E.g., I paid for the groceries with my credit card.
Pay + by is less common but used when we would like to specify the time. E.g., Please pay the bill by Friday.

(B) by using the companies' earnings and by profiting - same as explained above. We need "pay + with" as we discuss the payment method. Moreover, hoping "to pay" parallels "to profit."

(C) using the companies' earnings and profiting - same as B.

(D) with the company's earnings, profiting - with is ok. But we need plural "companies' ." Moreover, hoping "to pay" parallels "to profit."

(E) with the companies' earnings and to profit - perfect.