Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has advised Alibaba Group Holdings on its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, which raised a whopping $21.8 billion.

At that price, the IPO, one of the largest ever, would give Alibaba a market valuation of $167.6 billion, surpassing American corporate icons from Walt Disney Co to Boeing Co. The offering also vaults it atop U.S. e-commerce rivals like Amazon and eBay and gives it more financial firepower to expand in the United States and other markets.

Simpson Thacher advised Alibaba on U.S. law, led by Hong Kong partners Leiming Chen, Daniel Fertig and Bill Hinman. Palo Alto employee compensation and benefits partner Tristan Brown and tax partner Katharine Moir assisted on the transaction, as well as tax partner Rob Holo and intellectual property partner Lori Lesser in New York.

Fangda Partners and Maples and Calder acted as PRC and Cayman Islands counsel, respectively.

Morrison & Foerster advised Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp, which owns 32 percent of Alibaba, on the Chinese e-commerce company’s IPO. The team was led by Tokyo managing partner Ken Siegel, M&A partner Ivan Smallwood, technology partner Stuart Beraha and Beijing-based M&A partner Sherry Yin.

Sullivan & Cromwell advised the underwriters, which includes Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Citigroup and Barclays. King & Wood Mallesons advised the banks on PRC law.

Alibaba said it spent $15.8 million on legal fees to law firms that advised on the IPO. The legal fees for the IPO were the fourth highest in the past decade, according to IPO Vital Signs.

Facebook, in comparison, spent $2.6 million in legal fees for its IPO in May 2012.

Alibaba, whose sales are larger than Amazon and eBay combined, accounts for 80 percent of online sales in China.