It seems that Elon Musk’s Twitter deal is back on. Mr Musk “saw the writing on the wall”, as Wedbush analyst Dan Ives noted last week, and presumably accepted US courts were not going to allow him to pull out of April’s $44 billion (€45.5 billion) buyout of Twitter.

Mr Musk is surely experiencing a strong case of buyer’s remorse. The Nasdaq has fallen more than 20 per cent since April and social media companies have suffered especially heavy losses.

Facebook owner Meta has lost more than a third of its value since April, while Snapchat is down some 70 per cent.

Mr Musk’s Twitter deal values the company at 7.5 times its sales — way above both Meta (3.1) and Snapchat (4). Little wonder Mr Ives describes the deal as “one of the most overpriced acquisitions in the history of tech”.