Never before had the e-business industry faced as many financial losse

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

This one is particularly challenging because the phrase Never before had creates a peculiar sentence structure. If you started by focusing on the first verb in the choices—whether it should he faced or had to face—you had to realize that either one could be right depending on the rest of the choice. So, start with the final verb. (B) and (D) are out because the present tense in (B) doesn't make sense and the elimination of the verb in (D) doesn't work any better. As for the remaining choices, you can see by the structure of the sentence that the final verb in each choice parallels the first, that faced is the correct verb for both, but in different tenses. Pay attention to the meaning of the sentence: what happened in the 1990s had never happened before, so the first part of the sentence discusses the period of time before the 1990s. Therefore, the verb tense has to indicate a time before the 1990s, an option not possible if the second verb is had (faced). The second verb has to be in the simple past tense (faced) so that the first one can describe an earlier time (had faced). That leaves (E).

An 800 test takers knows the difference between the perfect tense and past perfect. The perfect tense (has played) describes either a very recent event or one that began in the past and has continued into the present. The past perfect (had played) describes an event both started and completed in the past.

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