Corporate heads flocking to Los Angeles for forum.

In what is expected to be the largest gathering of blue-chip company executives in the city's history, some 300 corporate chieftains will gather in Los Angeles this week for the 1997 Forbes CEO Forum.

Corporate executives from companies both in L.A. and out - including Robert E. Allen of AT&T Corp., James H. Clark of Netscape Communications Corp., Donald B. Marton of PaineWebber Group Inc. and Eli Broad of SunAmerica Inc. - are scheduled to attend the conference.

Scheduled speakers include Forbes Inc. President and CEO Steve Forbes, 1996 Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Jack Kemp and News. Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, who is in talks to purchase the Dodgers.

For corporate executives. the forum is a chance to schmooze with colleagues. but for civic boosters who helped bring it to L.A., it is a chance to promote the city as a business center.

"The biggest thing we want to come of this thing is to have CEOs take another look at Los Angeles as a place to do business." said Vincent M. Bryson, development director for the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership.

City officials first discussed bringing the forum - entitled "The New Millennium" - to Los Angeles about a year ago, shortly after Forbes held its second CEO conference in Toronto.

At the time. Forbes wanted to do an advertising supplement on L.A. - something that typically requires assistance from the city but the mayor's office told Forbes officials that it only wanted to participate if the supplement was tied to a CEO forum.

"We said, 'Why don't you bring your CEO conference here and we'll tie the supplement to it as sort of a package,'" said Steve Sugerman, spokesman for Mayor Richard Riordan and one of the event's organizers. "And that's what they're doing."

The 18-page advertising supplement, which will include ads by local companies as well as information on L.A. prepared by the mayor's office, will be included in the Sept. 22 issue of Forbes, which will also feature the magazine's annual list of the nation's highest-paid entertainers and is one of Forbes' best-selling issues each year.

Although Forbes holds 13 different forums around the country each year, the 1997 Forbes CEO Forum - subtitled "The Next Millennium" - will be the first forum the magazine has held in L.A.

"We wanted the CEO" forum, Sugerman said. "This is a very competitive conference for the city to get."

Sugerman also brought on board the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, NewLAMP and UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management - where the conference is being held and which is supplying speakers for the forum.

William Ouchi, vice dean of the Anderson Graduate School, said that the school's biggest involvement - aside from arranging space at UCLA and scheduling professors to speak - was landing Murdoch as the forum's keynote speaker.

Forum organizers "had no access to him, and we were able to get him to say yes," Ouchi said.

"There were several other cities that were eager to have this conference, and I think it's a very important thing for Los Angeles to have it here," Ouchi said.

Although many, including Ouchi, see the forum as a chance to promote L.A., others see the forum's expected success - attendance is expected to be higher than either of the two previous CEO forums - as proof that L.A. business already is being recognized.

"Any time you can bring a group of premier CEOs to this destination, it kind of confirms the recognition that Los Angeles is a leading destination for the corporate market," said Gailmarie Fort, vice president of marketing and communications for the L.A. Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Francesco C. Leboffe, vice president and general manager of Forbes Management Conference Group, agreed that L.A.'s continuing recovery from the recession of the early 1990s was what inspired Forbes to bring its latest forum to the city.

"We were looking for a business market area that is experiencing dynamic growth," he said.

Leboffe attributed the larger attendance of this year's forum to growing word of mouth about the annual event. "And, of course, the City of Los Angeles is also an attractive site," he said.

"I think it's great that it's in L.A., and I'm obviously far more likely to attend with it being in L.A., rather than if I had to fly to Atlanta to attend." said Arthur C. Darrow, president and CEO of the environmental engineering company Dames & Moore.