A former FrontPoint Partners hedge fund manager has launched his own fund with $500 million in initial assets.

After more than a year of work, Michael Litt finally launched Arrowhawk Capital Partners’ Durable Alpha Fund on Sept. 1. The firm was ready to launch the fund last September, just in time for the markets to collapse and for the institutional clients it was targeting to think twice about new allocations to new hedge funds.

“We were up against an almost impossible obstacle,” LItt told Pensions & Investments. “The bar to getting into business last year was so high. It was very difficult to attract investors because absolutely no one could make a decision in the last quarter of 2008 through the first quarter this year.”

That’s not a problem anymore: Arrowhawk has garnered a $200 million allocation from the Kentucky Retirement Systems and a $100 million allocation from the San Joaquin County (Calif.) Employees’ Retirement Association, in addition to $25 million in seed funding from the Darien, Conn.-based firm’s partners. It is the Kentucky pension’s first-ever direct hedge fund investment.

Durable Alpha is a global opportunistic multi-strategy fund, with global equity, global credit and interest rate, currency and liquid commodity portfolios. According to Litt, it is risk-controlled and has a fundamental investment approach. It charges a 1% management fee with a two-year lockup and a 2% management fee for a one-year lockup, as well as a 20% performance fee after it beats its benchmark.

Litt left FrontPoint, were he co-managed its multi-strategy and enhanced index funds, in 2007 after it was acquired by Morgan Stanley.