The company's ______ acquisition strategy — buying up competitors not to integrate them but simply to eliminate potential threats — revealed a ruthlessness that alarmed even seasoned market analysts.
Correct: B
Predatory specifically means having or showing a tendency to attack and devour other organisms or entities; in a business context, it describes aggressive acquisitions aimed at eliminating competition. Rapacious means rapingly greedy, avaricious means having an extreme desire for wealth or gain, and voracious means having a very eager approach to an activity. The key distinction is that predatory captures the strategic, hunting-like nature of the acquisitions — buying competitors specifically to remove threats — which the other words do not convey as precisely.