Business Southern California

If the message got any clearer, you'd hear "Fire me!" echo from the helipads atop downtown Los Angeles. After all, if you want to get rich, there's no better way than getting fired--at least if you're a top officer at a top company. The latest ranking of the most highly compensated chief executives in Southern California serves only to underscore the point. The three highest-paid executives--Robert Annunziata of Global Crossing Ltd., Mark Willes of the former Times Mirror Co.

For a handful of reasons, the notion of an outsider launching a business on an Indian reservation sounds good: cheap land, a tribal government that can speed projects along, minimal environmental restrictions, various tax incentives and federally guaranteed bank loans. So it is with great optimism that the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians is developing its Resource Recovery Park, situated on 640 acres of desert north of the Salton Sea, to host various types of recycling businesses.

Nearly two dozen Southland businesses and individuals have been honored during the second annual Rideshare Diamond Awards, a recognition for their efforts to promote carpooling. "Businesses and employers play an important role in the promotion of ridesharing and alternative commuting, and it is important to acknowledge their efforts to limit the number of cars on our roads and enhance our overall air quality," said Jim Sims, director of Southern California Rideshare.

With "new economy" job centers popping up in pricey suburbs--and young families pushing into the desert and mountains in the search for affordable housing--commuting patterns that once defined Los Angeles are being turned upside down. Downtown Los Angeles, which historically has been the hub of car, bus and rail traffic in the five-county metropolitan region, still gets its share of heavy traffic, as any commuter to the Civic Center well knows.

Ask a venture capitalist where to find opportunity these days and you get a surprising answer: Southern California. As recently as five years ago, you could count the number of venture capital firms operating in the Southland on the fingers of one hand. Now the area hosts more than a dozen, about half of them newcomers to Southern California in the last year alone. And it's a good bet that more are on the way.

Internet-related companies in the e-commerce, entertainment and business-to-business fields garnered the bulk of the increasing amounts of venture capital invested in the Southland during the fourth quarter, according to a report to be released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers. "The amount of money was unbelievable, and most of it went to the young 'dot-coms,' " said Massoud Entekhabi, managing partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Southern California's emergence as a powerhouse in communications and networking technology was underscored Monday by a proposed $3-billion takeover of an Alhambra company whose value increased 30-fold in less than a year. The deal by telecommunications giant Lucent Technologies to acquire little-known Ortel Corp.

Southern California's trade-related businesses handled an unprecedented flood of overseas goods last year, as the nation's busiest ports at Long Beach and Los Angeles took in record cargo volume. The onslaught aided growth at local distribution facilities, transportation companies, freight-forwarding concerns and other trade-sector businesses in the region. Many companies had to scramble to find workers to keep up with an unrelenting flow of cargo. "Yes, we had a good year.

High-tech business incubators seem to be sprouting up in Southern California faster than the high-tech start-ups themselves. And look for this trend to continue in 2000. Business incubators have long nurtured all manner of companies by providing cheap rent, shared access to amenities such as conference rooms and photocopiers, and business guidance that entrepreneurs would otherwise be hard-pressed to find.

Multibillion-dollar mergers, highflying IPOs, companies on the cutting edge of electronic commerce--it all sounds so Silicon Valley. Except that in 1999, it was happening in Southern California. Just in time for the start of the new millennium, the Tech Coast matured into a technology center in its own right. Southland companies such as MP3.com, EToys, Buy.com and Stamps.com helped raise the region's profile with innovative products, creative business models and brisk stock market performances.