GAMCO Investors has kicked off 2012 with two additions to one of its investment teams as well as the launch of a new fund concentrating on five companies.

Kevin Dreyer and Christopher Marangi have joined the team managing the Gabelli Dividend & Income Trust. They joined the firm, then known as Gabelli Asset Management, as research analysts in 2005 and 2003 respectively. Dreyer currently leads the company’s consumer research team while Marangi, with a background at JP Morgan, heads up the digital research unit.

The $1.9 billion fund is non-diversified and closed-ended. It has been managed by Mario Gabelli – the company’s founder, chief executive and chairman – and Barbara Marcin since its inception in 2003. Robert Leininger was added to the team in 2010.

Gabelli was included in the 2010 Forbes list of the world’s billionaires with a net worth estimated at $1 billion.

Separately, the firm has unveiled a new fund based on a report titled The Focus Five that GAMCO published in 2006. Technically, the fund is a change of name and direction for the Gabelli Woodland Small Cap Fund.

The Gabelli Focus Five Fund will seek to invest up to 50 per cent in five companies and the rest in no more than twenty additional equity securities, short-term high-grade liquid investments or cash equivalents. 

Daniel Miller will lead the fund’s portfolio management team that also comprises Sarah Donnelly and Elizabeth Lilly. Miller is a president of GAMCO-affiliated Gabelli & Company.