* found the answer to my first question,

my last question is on how the experts properly read that in answer choice A the intended parallelism is not "announced" and "expected". Since it's a 1-part parallel marker "and", we have flexibility in choosing the segments that are parallel and i incorrectly saw that it was announced/reported in A.

company announced that it would cut 10 percent of its workforce--more than 2,000 jobs--and expected to report a

is this more of a meaning issue?

yeah, that version of the sentence really doesn't make much sense. according to that wording, the company actually announced the first thing, but, in the case of the second, the narrator just knows (seemingly by pure magic) what the company “expected”.
for the sentence to be reasonable, the company would have to announce its expectations.

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ron,
i would like to confirm the reason for difference in parallel elements in a) and b). following is the method that i follow, please tell whether i am correct

for a) - i saw that element next to "and" is a verb. i traversed backwards from "and" to find a verb (grammatical parallelism). after i found the verb (would cut), i saw whether both of these verbs should be parallel in context (logical parallelism). both of these establish (company would cut and company expected) that parallelism is OK in a)

for b) - i saw that element next to "and" is a verb. i traversed backwards from "and" to find a verb (grammatical parallelism). after i found the verb (would be), i saw whether both of these verbs should be parallel in context (logical parallelism). both of these are not parallel because their subjects differ. we need a verb whose subject is company. so i traversed again and encountered (announced). both of these have same subject but now meaning is drastically changed. so parallelism is NOT OK.

the problem with (b) isn't with the subjects of the verbs. after all, it's rather plain that the company is the subject of both "announced" and "expected".

the issue with the verbs there is that, together, they don't make a lot of sense.
if you say the company announced xxxxx and expected yyyyy, then imagine what this would signify from the point of view of the narrator/writer/speaker of the sentence.
specifically, the narrator would be telling us that the company actually announced xxxxx (which makes sense), but, then, the narrator would also be telling us that the company expected yyyyy, even though it hadn't announced that part.

that's not a very sensible meaning, since it entails the notion that the narrator can basically read the company's mind.
the meaning in the original -- namely, that the company simply announced both things -- is much more reasonable.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

i agree but i think i did not make my question clear enough. let me put my question in a more direct manner. what was going through your mind when you marked the parallel elements in a) & b). why you marked different parallel elements (in green)

there was nothing going through Ron's mind at all. this is not something you have to process mentally. "expected" is a verb, and Ron simply underlined the two verbs to the left of the "and" to highlight the possibilities. i see some of my previous posts on this topic have been deleted, but i want to reiterate that structurally both of these are parallel! Ron's point is that the second set are "not the right items" because they mess with the intended meaning. your takeaway from this is that you should accept BOTH a and b on structural grounds and then use your thinking skills to determine which of them have a correct meaning..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor