Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton is advising Line Corp, a Japanese messaging app operator, on an initial public offering of its shares in Tokyo and New York that could value the company at 588 billion yen ($5.5 billion).

The underwriters on the transaction, Morgan Stanley, Nomura Securities International, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Securities are being advised by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

Tokyo-headquartered Line Corp expects to raise as much as 112.7 billion yen, making the IPO Japan's biggest of this year. The company, owned by South Korea's Naver Corp, plans to use the proceeds to bolster an international push.

Line Corp is currently the seventh most-used messenger app globally, with 218 million users as of the end of March. In comparison, WhatsApp has 1 billion monthly active users and Facebook’s Messenger app has 900 million.

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