GMAT PREP (SC)

I will post OA...but let us try to get more reasonable and logical explanation first. your answer is not correct.

SALES has to be follwoed by OF and not FOR ..that eliminates A,C,E
Between B and D, B is incorrect because it uses INCLUDES for CHALLENGES
it should have WHICH INCUDE X AND Y.
hence D is the correct answer

"included among" is redundant, or at least sounds redundant to me, so eliminate A & C

B uses "which," which refers to "the company" directly preceding it - the company does not include the threats. - eliminate B

The confusion I have is between D & E - to my ear, "among them" sounds better than "among these," yet they are both grammatically correct. However, "the threat of" to me implies that a lawsuit is a possibility rather than a definite, whereas "the threat from" to me implies that the lawsuit is a given, which makes more sense considering that this is a challenge that is facing the company. Also "as well as" sounds better than "and" in this case.

Answer E

D is the choice according to me as "Sales of" should be the correct usage and "which" in B refers to company.

When I read this question, my eye went to the "declin-e/ing" "OF" idiom too, but I usually tell my students to leave idiom splits for last -- in general, unless you are 99.9% sure of an idiom (a good test is: would you bet someone 500 bucks you're right?)--then it is safer to eliminate choices with other concrete grammatical errors first.

The next concrete split I noticed in the answers is the use of "including" and "included" before "among" in choices A and C, respectively. The usage of either of these words makes the usage of "among" redundant, so both choices are out. This left me with B, D, and E.

Choice B starts with the relative pronoun "which," which introduces a noun modifier. Noun modifiers must touch the nouns they modify. Since we want to modify "the challenges" rather than "the company," choice B is out.

To choose between D and E, you should know that the GMAT generally does not allow usage of demonstrative pronouns (this, that these, & those) where nouns are required-- additionally, "among" is a preposition and therefore should be followed by the object case. So you can't say "among these" and must say "among them" instead. Even without depending on the idiom distinction, you can arrive at the answer: D.

I am with E because in D the "among them" would mean "among the investors" and not "among the threats" as it should.

Does someone know the OA for this please ?