Question: The inventor of the Maxim Gun issued 1.9 million shares to what man?

Passages:
Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (5 February 1840 – 24 November 1916) was an American-born inventor who moved from the United States to the United Kingdom at the age of 41.  He remained an American citizen until he became a naturalised British subject in 1900.  He was the inventor of the Maxim Gun – the first portable, fully automatic machine gun – and held patents on mechanical devices such as a mousetrap, hair-curling irons, and steam pumps.  He laid claim to inventing the lightbulb, and even experimented with powered flight, but his large aircraft designs were never successful.  However, his "Captive Flying Machine" amusement ride, designed as a means by which to fund his research while generating public interest in flight, was highly successful. The "Maschinengewehr" 08, or MG 08, was the German Army's standard machine gun in World War I and is an adaptation of Hiram S. Maxim's original 1884 Maxim gun.  It was produced in a number of variants during the war.  The MG 08 served during World War II as a heavy machine gun in many German infantry divisions, although by the end of the war it had mostly been relegated to second-rate fortress units. Hudson Maxim (February 3, 1853 – May 6, 1927), was a U.S. inventor and chemist who invented a variety of explosives, including smokeless gunpowder, Thomas Edison referred to him as "the most versatile man in America".  He was the brother of Hiram Stevens Maxim, inventor of the Maxim gun and uncle of Hiram Percy Maxim, inventor of the Maxim Silencer. The Maxim gun was a weapon invented by American-British inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1883: it was the first recoil-operated machine gun.  It has been called "the weapon most associated with the British imperial conquest", and likewise was used in colonial wars by other countries between 1886–1914. The Maxim-Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company was the result of a takeover by Hiram Maxim of Thorsten Nordenfelt's Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company in 1888.  Rothschild issued £1.9 million of shares to finance the merger.  Nathan Rothschild retained a substantial shareholding in the new Maxim-Nordenfelt combine and ‘exerted a direct influence over its management’. The Beretta Model 1918 was a submachine gun that entered service in 1918 with the Italian armed forces.  Designed initially as a semi-automatic rifle, the weapon came with an overhead inserted magazine, an unconventional design based on the simplicity of allowing a spent round to be replaced using only gravity.  The gun was made from half of a Villar-Perosa aircraft submachine gun, and as such it can be considered the first submachine gun issued to and used by the Italian armed forces, and is possibly the first SMG used as a general-issue combat weapon. The T30 Howitzer Motor Carriage (HMC) was a United States Army self-propelled gun used in World War II.  Its design was based on requirements for an assault gun issued by the Armored Force in 1941 and it was built as an interim solution until a fully tracked design was complete. William Cantelo (born 1839) was a 19th-century British inventor.  Credited with developing an early machine gun, he disappeared from his home in Southampton in the 1880s.  While trying to find Cantelo, his two sons saw a photograph of American born inventor Hiram Maxim, creator of the Maxim gun; his superficial similarity to their father led them to believe that he had re-emerged under a new name. The company was privately held until its October 6, 2009, initial public offering, which raised $1.9 billion for several of the large insurance companies that were its primary shareholders, making it the largest IPO in the United States for the year 2009.  The firm did not raise any funds for itself in the IPO, which was designed to provide an opportunity for the firm's casualty and property insurer owners to sell some or all of their holdings and to provide a market price for those retaining their shares.  The 2009 IPO was priced at $22 per share for 85.25 million shares owned by its shareholders, including American International Group, The Hartford and Travelers, making it the largest since the 2008 IPO for Visa Inc. In an action described by investment research company Morningstar as a "vote of confidence" in Verisk, Berkshire Hathaway was the only company among the firm's largest shareholders that did not sell any of its stock in the October 2009 IPO. Giuseppe Antonio Berardinelli (March 28, 1922 – June 2, 2001) was an American professional boxer.  He was a World Light Heavyweight Champion.  He took the ring-name Joey Maxim from the Maxim gun, the world's first self-acting machine gun, based on his ability to rapidly throw a large number of left jabs.

Supporting sentences:
 Rothschild issued £1.9 million of shares to finance the merger.  Nathan Rothschild retained a substantial shareholding in the new Maxim-Nordenfelt combine and ‘exerted a direct influence over its management’.  He was the inventor of the Maxim Gun – the first portable, fully automatic machine gun – and held patents on mechanical devices such as a mousetrap, hair-curling irons, and steam pumps.