This one isn't quite as ugly as the
QOTD on crickets, but there's a nice bit of "next-level" pronoun stuff going on here.
And for those of you who missed it, we also covered this question in our live YouTube session this past Monday. The video is available
here.
Quote:
(A) investment officers' fees to be based on how the funds they manage perform, several corporations began
OK, so here's another little nuance that the GMAT seems to like: subject pronouns ("they", in this case) can't refer back to possessive nouns. This rule seems a little bit silly to me, but I can't find any official GMAT questions that violate this rule.
So in this particular question, "they" must refer back to... "fees", I guess, since it can't refer to the possessive "investment officers'"? And "fees" would make no sense.
Also, "since 1986" requires us to use the present perfect tense "have begun," not the past tense "began." Eliminate (A).
Quote:
(B) investment officers' fees to be based on the performance of the funds they manage, several corporations began
Same exact errors as (A). So (B) is gone, too.
Quote:
(C) that fees of investment officers be based on how the funds they manage perform, several corporations have begun
I'm really not crazy about the phrase "began to allow that fees of investment officers be based on how the funds they manage perform..." Really, "allow that fees... be based..."?? That's a mess. If you wanted to be conservative, you could hang onto this one. But as we'll see in a moment, (D) is a better option.
Quote:
(D) fees of investment officers to be based on the performance of the funds they manage, several corporations have begun
Sure, this looks better: "allow fees... to be based." Much cleaner than the same part of (C). So we can keep (D).
Quote:
(E) that investment officers' fees be based on the performance of the funds they manage, several corporations began
Same pair of errors as in (A) and (B). (E) is gone, and (D) is the correct answer.