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How come the following two clauses connected with a comma (the third comma) instead of conjunction or period?

The firm, Revolution, plans to raise up to $100 million for that fund's investment, it disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. (The New York Times, Nov 19, 2017)

If there is any specific rule. Please let me know.

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    I don’t want to respond to the issue of rules. However, the sentence is awkward for the reader to navigate. The reason for it is, I think, that journalists are compelled to stretch grammar and punctuation to their limits in order to achieve the compression (brevity) required in newspaper reports. Any way I have tried to make it easier to read takes up more space.
    – Tuffy
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 13:27

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One often finds this type of construction as the lede in a newspaper article. That the firm plans to raise $100 million is the real news, not that this plan was disclosed in an SEC filing.

The reason for the comma is that the entire clause

The firm, Revolution, plans to raise up to $100 million for that fund's investment

is a relative clause without the pronoun that that serves as the direct object of the verb disclosed. The comma is necessary before the second clause, much as in a direct citation:

“I'm going home,” John announced.

So your sentence is basically

The firm plans to raise megabucks, it disclosed.

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  • Except that reported speech is couched in the past tense. This construction keeps to the present tense and also avoids a passive construction (was disclosed).
    – KarlG
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 15:34
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    Sorry, mind elsewhere. A quote-like structure. Even closer is 'quote-structured' thought as it does not need the quotes: The firm plans to raise megabucks, John realised.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 15:55
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One of the guidelines (that's nicer than "rules") in journalism is Clarity, and that often leads to Short Sentences. Or, to be didactic, Don't Ramble. Some editor somewhere should have caught this and broken the long sentence something like this:
The firm, Revolution, plans to raise up to $100 million for that fund's investment. Revolution disclosed the plan ___ in a filing before ....... Alternatively, the writer could have used a semicolon, but a period and new sentence is usually better. This is journalism, not Spinoza. Keep it Simple and Straightforward.

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The firm, Revolution, plans to raise up to $100 million for that fund's investment, it disclosed ___ in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It doesn't require a heavy punctuation mark like a semicolon or a full stop since what follows the mark is not an independent clause. A comma is required, though, to mark the boundary of the content of disclosure.

The verb “disclosed” normally requires a complement like a direct object or, as is the case here, a complement clause. Here, the complement is missing and is represent by the gap notation “___”.

Gap obtains its core meaning anaphorically from the preceding verb phrase “plans to raise up to $100 million for that fund's investment”, from which was can deduce that the salient interpretation of gap is “(that) it plans to raise up to $100 million for that fund's investment”, i.e. a declarative content clause.

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