V01-15

Official Solution:


Goldman Sachs Inc. had been investing in Crystal Technologies, a cloud computing company, for several years, but they withdrew all their funding in 2008, and after a year Crystal went bankrupt.


A. had been investing in Crystal Technologies, a cloud computing company, for several years, but they withdrew all their funding in 2008, and after a year Crystal went bankrupt
B. has been investing in Crystal Technologies, a cloud computing company, for several years but withdrew all its funding in 2008, a year after Crystal went bankrupt.
C. had invested in Crystal Technologies, a cloud computing company, for several years, but it withdrew all its funding in 2008; a year after it went bankrupt.
D. had been investing in Crystal Technologies, a cloud computing company, for several years but withdrew all its funding in 2008, a year after which Crystal went bankrupt.
E. was investing in Crystal Technologies, a cloud computing company, for several years, but a year before it went bankrupt in 2008, it withdrew all its funding.


A. The pronoun “they” and “their” do not have a proper antecedent - the company Goldman Sachs Inc. is singular.

B. Present perfect continuous “has been investing” is wrong. Present perfect implies that the action is still continuing to happen till the present moment, whereas the action actually ceased to continue in 2008. Here it is required to depict an action that was continuing to happen in the past and hence a past continuous or a past perfect continuous is required. A past perfect continuous is more appropriate than a past continuous here, because there exists a time reference (2008) in the sentence till when the action investing continued to happen - without this time reference, past continuous would be alright.

The part “a year after Crystal went bankrupt” is a run-on sentence. Since this part is an independent clause, it must be separated by either a semicolon or a conjunction.

C. The past participle tense “had invested” is wrong. The action investing continued for several years in the past and hence either a past continuous or a past perfect continuous must be used. A past perfect continuous is more appropriate than a past continuous here, because there exists a time reference (2008) in the sentence till when the action investing continued to happen - without this time reference, past continuous would be alright.

The pronoun “it” occurs twice in the sentence - once it refers to “Goldman sachs Inc.”, the other time it refers to “Crystal Technologies”. It is not allowed in GMAT to use the same pronoun to refer to two different antecedents in the same sentence.

D. CORRECT. Past perfect continuous “had been investing” is used to depict an action that continued to happen in the past for a certain period of time till a time reference (2008).

E. Use of past continuous “was investing” is questionable. A past perfect continuous is more appropriate than a past continuous here, because there exists a time reference (2008) in the sentence till when the action investing continued to happen - without this time reference, past continuous would be alright.

The pronoun “it” refers to Goldman Sachs Inc. (If there are two possible antecedents for a pronoun that is the subject of a clause, by virtue of parallelism, this pronoun refers unambiguously to the subject of the other parallel clause.) Thus this construction changes the meaning - it implies wrongly that Goldman Sachs went bankrupt.


Answer: D
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The question or/and solution has been revised and edited. Thank you sayantanc2k !!!
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Hi sayantanc2k
I originally chose option D but the one thing that threw me off was the missing "it" before the phrase "withdrew all its funding in 2008"

"had been investing in Crystal Technologies, a cloud computing company, for several years but withdrew all its funding in 2008, a year after which Crystal went bankrupt".

I feel that "but withdrew" doesn't clearly point to the subject Goldman Sachs Inc in this sentence. Can you please explain where I'm going wrong?

I think this is a poor-quality question and the explanation isn't clear enough, please elaborate. Option B is rejected for one of the reasons that the part “a year after Crystal went bankrupt” is a run-on sentence. Does the introduction of "which" in option D makes this choice different from B for run-on purpose? I understand that "which" indicates a dependent clause. However, isn't "which" omission in choice B an ellipsis? Also, I think we may interpret this part as a modifier- "a year" is modifying 2008 and this part would mean withdrawal took place after Crystal went bankrupt- this is illogical though and the choice would be rejected on meaning issue, but same thing is applicable to the correct choice D- meaning issue (please read below).

Further, the meaning isn't clear for choice B and D. Does it mean that Crystal went bankrupt in 2009 or 2007? On merging the modifier/ independent clause after the comma, the sentence would read- "Goldman withdrew all its funding in the year after which Crystal went bankrupt." In this case, it would mean that Crystal went bankrupt in 2007- then how can an investor withdraw money from a company which has already gone bankrupt last year?
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