Facebook board member, PayPal co-founder and arch venture capitalist Peter Thiel has revealed it would be 2012 “at the earliest” before the social networking site Facebook would be ready to IPO.
Thiel reportedly told Fox News and Reuters that the company will not rush to IPO and taking a leaf from Google will not do so until late in the process.
Thiel said Facebook plans to remain private for “as long as possible” and that it would be “2012 at the earliest” before Facebook would go public.
Facebook has revenues approaching US$1bn and CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has said previously that an IPO is inevitable because the company has a contract with its investors to do so.
According to the Wall Street Journal, if Facebook were to IPO in 2011 it would have a market capitalisation of between US$35bn to US$40bn.
