After the company recalled one of its best-selling products, it would

A query:

In option A, the section "an expense that would have forced its main competitor to declare bankruptcy if it had suffered such a loss" is IMO a noun (An expense) + noun modifier (that .....), which modifies "one billion" and not "loss". So it is correctly placed and makes sense that the loss of (NOUN) "one billion" ( and NOT LOSS) would have forced the company to declare bankruptcy.
Also, "it" in "it had suffered such a loss" i believe refers to the main competitor. Though "it" may as well refer to the initial company (Not sure though).

In option D, the section "its main competitor would have been forced to declare bankruptcy if it had suffered such a loss" implies that someone/something else is forcing the main competitor to declare bankruptcy which IMO is incorrect.

So please confirm the right option.

Hi,
Received a PM to respond to this one.

You are correct in saying that in option A, “an expense that would have forced its main competitor to declare bankruptcy if it had suffered such a loss” is a Noun (an expense) + Noun Modifier (that .....). However, notice that it cannot refer to “one billion dollar” because it is an adjective. The complete noun phrase here is “a one billion dollar loss”. Hence, this Noun + Noun Modifier refer to this entire noun phrase. This is illogical because a loss cannot be an expense.

Pronoun “it” in “it had suffered such a loss” correctly refers to “main competitor”.

The correct option for this problem is option D indeed. Study the full sentence with the correct option:

After the company recalled one of its best-selling products, it was forced to accept a one billion dollar loss; its main competitor would have been forced to declare bankruptcy if it had suffered such a loss.

The sentence clearly states the reason why the company was forced to accept a one billion dollar loss. It was forced to do so because it recalled one of its best-selling products. So here we have cause-effect relationship.
The independent clause after semicolon clearly and correctly states that if its main competitor had suffered such a loss, it would have been forced to declare bankruptcy.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hi Sharddha,
Can you explain why 'it' cannot refer to 'the company'? I feel 'it' is ambiguous in here..Please explain..Thanks

Hi there,

In Choice D, the refrence of "it" is not ambiguous beause it appears in the independent clause that comes after the semicolon. This clause only talk about the "main competitor". his is the grammatical part of it. Logically also, "it" cannot refer to "the company" because why would the "main competitor" declare bankruptcy if the company (it) had suffered such a loss? This logic is also applicable to the reference of "it" in choice A as well.

Hope thus helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

There's no doubt about it: This is an ugly sentence and a very difficult question. Nevertheless, find some differences among the choices that will help you to tackle it. You can start with the verbs. We begin with After the company recalled and then move to it would be forced, but since the sentence is talking about something that already happened, the second verb should be it was forced. Eliminate (A) and (C). You can also eliminate (E) for offering the strange variation a one billion dollar loss it was forced to accept. (B) is wrong because it creates a sentence fragment. Make sure you know this fact: a semicolon is correct only when it joins two pieces that could stand as independent and complete sentences. In other words, you can use a semicolon only if you could use a period at the same place and still have complete sentences. (B) doesn't do that, so (D) remains.

An 800 test taker knows that even though the GMAT does not explicitly test punctuation, it's important to know how semicolons and commas work.

Hi all.
I thought that GMAT does not allow pronouns that refer to different precedents in a sentence.
But the correct answer its refers to the company and the second it refers to main competitor. Is there any similar examples

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