Recruit Holdings, the largest staffing company in Japan, announced that it will launch on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 16 October 2014, in an initial public offering worth an estimated JPY 193 billion (USD 1.8 billion), reports The Daily Mail.

Recruit said its indicative price for the offering was JPY 2,800 (USD 26,36) per share. The offering will comprise both new shares, as well as existing stock being sold by shareholders.

The offering will help Recruit, which has ambitions to be the largest human resources firm in the world by 2020, pay for future acquisitions.

This is the second public listing for the staffing company, which was embroiled in an insider trading and corruption scandal, forcing many prominent Japanese politicians to resign, in 1988.

In 1989, the founder of Recruit Holdings (formerly Recruit Co), Hiromasa Ezoe, was arrested for granting unlisted shares in one of the firm’s subsidiaries, Recruit Cosmos Co, to a number of high-profile politicians (including the Prime Minister), business leaders, and senior bureaucrats.

The scandal, still remembered as one of the most notorious in the country, brought down the Japanese government at the time.

Following the scandal, Recruit became a private company. It was previously rumoured that Recruit Holdings intended to list in October 2012.    

According to research from Staffing Industry Analysts, in 2013 Recruit Holdings was the fifth largest staffing company in the world, with revenue in 2012 of €4.87 billion (USD 6.3 billion).