Facebook would consider a buyout offer in excess of $10 billion but is unlikely to go public for at least 18 months, one of the company’s directors has said.

Peter Thiel said speculation that the fast-growing networking site was on the verge of listing was misplaced. The earliest that Facebook would file for an initial public offering would be 2009, “and hopefully not until significantly after that”.

He said that the company was under no pressure to raise funds.

Analysts and others had “read too much” into a recent job listing on Facebook’s website for a stock administration manager, Mr Thiel told thedeal.com recently. The position, which involves managing an options programme, is usually only required by a public company.

Facebook, which has 52 million users worldwide, has been the subject of widespread speculation in recent months.

Last year the company, which is run by Mark Zuckerberg, its 23-year-old chief executive, reportedly turned down an offer of $1 billion from Yahoo!. Earlier this month, there was speculation that Microsoft wanted to buy the site for $6 billion.

Asked whether Facebook would list or consider a buyout, Mr Thiel said: “I think the preference we have would be to do neither.” It would take a significant sum to gain the management’s attention, he added. “If we got an offer from someone of $10 billion, we would probably listen to them. I don’t think we’re going to get that offer, and we’re not going to solicit.”

Mr Thiel, one of the company’s early backers who invested $500,000 for an undisclosed stake in 2004, said that Facebook was on track to earn $150 million in 2007, most of which would come from advertising.

The reason a sale was unlikely was because of the “significant valuation gap” that existed between potential buyers and Facebook’s board, he told thedeal.com.

Mr Zuckerberg will face a court in Boston, Massachusetts, today, accused of stealing the idea and source code for Facebook from ConnectU, a similar, university-based social network site that he worked for as a programmer four years ago.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and their business partner Divya Narendra, claim that Mr Zuckerberg stole not only the “basic idea” of Facebook from ConnectU, but also its specific code, which they say was “proprietary and confidential”.

They have asked that Facebook be shut down and that control of the site – and its profits – be handed over to them in an action that accuses Mr Zuckerberg of copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract.

Mr Zuckerberg denies any wrongdoing and his lawyers have asked that the judge dismiss the case.

Accusations that the claimants are being opportunistic appear unfounded as the lawsuit was first brought in August 2004, when Facebook had only 200,000 registered users. Proce-dural delays mean that the case has not been heard until now.

In March, ConnectU’s case was dismissed on a technicality, but because the legal merits were not ruled upon the site’s founders filed a new action that is due to be heard today.

According to an article in the Stanford Daily three years ago, Mr Zuckerberg began working with the team from ConnectU.com in November 2003, working on coding, attending meetings and sending e-mails.

He left the site, which was called Harvard Connection, to develop his own ideas and three months later launched Facebook. He has said that he did six hours of coding for ConnectU on a voluntary basis, but he thought the site was a “personals page” and not a social networking site.