The new chief of a Midwestern mutual fund shop just brought on his firm's first ever salesperson.

Gary W. DiCenzo Cognios Capital, LLC CEO

Gary DiCenzo, who took over as CEO of Cognios Capital at the end of March (and who previously led distribution for nearby Scout), confirms that this spring Taylor Dorman joined the Leawood, Kansas-based quantitative asset manager as a regional vice president. It's part of a broader effort to build out marketing and distributing for the firm in advance of its flagship Cognios Market Neutral Large Cap mutual fund hitting its three-year track record at the end of this year; the strategy behind the fund is a little more than four years old.

Jonathan C. Angrist Cognios Capital President, Chief Investment Officer

"We're coming up on significant milestones," DiCenzo tells MFWire. "I understand the value of marketing and PR."

Per that understanding, Cognios is now working with a PR firm, Barkley. Cognios' Azure Postell is working on marketing, and DiCenzo himself is supporting distribution, too. DiCenzo expects to further expand his marketing and distribution teams, but not just yet.

"We're going to be patient," DiCenzo says. "We want to justify additional infrastructure with additional asset gathering."

Taylor Dorman Cognios Capital Regional Vice President

Cognios' flagship strategy, president and chief investment officer Jon Angrist explains, is a long-short equity strategy "meant to be neutral to the S&P 500".

"We're targeting equity-like returns, over time ... with significantly low correlation and significant downside protection," DiCenzo says.

"It's simple for us to explain and hopefully simple to understand," Angrist says. 

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