Summing up the possible outcomes of Elon Musk’s increasingly rancorous offer for Twitter would easily bust the limit of a 280-character tweet.

Tesla’s chief said on Friday he was backing out of the $44bn deal to buy the social media company, accusing it of disclosing “false and misleading” information about the number of fake and spam accounts.

Withdrawing would usually mean paying a break fee, or a $1bn “reverse termination fee” in this case, but Musk’s lawyers gave other grounds for abandoning the deal (discussed by Alphaville) that suggest he may be trying to avoid such a penalty. Then again, this could be a gambit to buy Twitter at a lower price — his $54.20 a share offer is looking expensive, with the stock falling nearly 10 per cent on Monday to $33.29.