The legal war between one of the world’s biggest and most secretive hedge funds and one of its former star money managers saw an unlikely new front open up this year: the exclusive Hudson National Golf Club in Westchester.

Daniel Michalow’s membership was initially terminated last year for what he describes as a series of minor infractions spread over a decade. These included one occasion when his golf partner Larry Summers, the former US Treasury secretary, answered an e-mail on a green from then president Barack Obama. On another occasion, Mr Michalow missed a cocktail party that was being held in honour of his father joining as a member. 

Instead, Mr Michalow, a 37 year-old and an expert on some of the more esoteric sections of the fixed income market, believes there was another reason for his golf club ejection: pressure from his former employer DE Shaw, the hedge fund which manages $50bn of assets. In a letter to the golf club in May, Mr Michalow claimed that “DE Shaw has gone to great lengths to impede me from continuing my career” and that he believed one of its executives contacted the club “attempting to interfere with my membership.”