There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Or bridge. Or turnpike.

Every project we’re talking about at Reuters first-ever Reuters Infrastructure Summit has an enormous cost — sometimes in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And governments are looking for ways to pay for it all.

Enter public-private partnerships (or P3s as we cool, infrastructure types like to say these days). In these deals, governments will lease or sell an asset to a group of investors for a certain big up-front fee and then they will pay the government a certain per-year fee for the right.

For Ambassador Felix Rohatyn, former executive at Lazard Freres and crafter of the New York City economic rescue in the mid-1970s, these are good ideas, but they don’t come without a cost.

Rohatyn, one of the featured guests at this year’s summit and author of a new book on big U.S. infrastructure projects called “Bold Endeavors“, said that in general P3s are a good thing as they should give governments more flexibility to do the things they need to do. But like everything, they carry some risk and officials should go into these deals with their eyes open.

The Reuters Infrastructure Summit continues through the end of this week in New York, San Francisco and Washington.

Infrastructure spending. Public-private partnerships. Government buildouts.

This week, all of these kinds of phrases are much on the mind of our guests at the first ever Reuters Infrastructure Summit held in New York, San Francisco and Washington.

While infrastructure means different things to almost all of our guests (schools, roads, bridges, etc) — one of our first guests, Petra Todorovich, talked at length about the need for high speed rails.

Todorovich, the director of the Regional Plan Association’s America 2050 project, told Reuters that buiding the high-speed rails makes a great deal of sense for travel, business and infrastructure.

What model would she use? Try the airlines. While equity investors might feel a cold wind blowing through their portfolios at the mention of the perpetually difficult-to-predict sector, Todorovich likes the way the industry melds its private side with its public financing.

Todorovich also spoke about other models for infrastructure spending that different locales have used.

Todorovich was one of the first speakers at this year’s summit, which runs through the end of this week.

This week’s annual Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit has been a pretty rich event.

Oh, the guests have been stellar, for sure, but there’s also been a lot of talk about gold and jewelry and the prospect that maybe someday this lousy economy will turn around.

For Peter Marrone, chief executive of Yamana Gold, customers’ willingness to buy jewelry is an important consideration in providing outlook for his company.

But even with times so tough, jewelry sales are an inexact science, he warned. And overall gold demand is less a matter of whether someone is willing to shell out a couple hundred dollars on a new necklace and more based on investors looking for safe-haven investments in times when other investments are far shakier.

Marrone was one of the featured speakers at the summit, which continues through Thursday in New York, London and Sydney. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Global technology; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Islamic Banking.

The Summits continue next week at the annual Global Food and Agriculture Summit with guests in the U.S. and Asia from March 16-19; and the Funds Summit in Luxembourg on March 17-18.

There is an entire industry out there about what to do to make a merger a success. Many of us know bankers or lawyers who work for weeks and hours on end just to make sure their deals are perfectly done with all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted.

Millions of dollars are spent on just teaching people the best way to get a transaction from idea to completion.

In fact, we found out this week that sometimes the key to a good deal is a plate full of small, pickled fish.

Well, at least if you’re negotiating with Alcoa’s Chief Executive Klaus Kleinfeld.

Kleinfeld, speaking at the annual Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit described how he and his counterpart recently structured a deal and decided that it was the best thing for both companies. His thoughts were instructive to dealmakers who right now might have a little more time on their hands and might be looking for new ways to seal a deal.

Anyway, even if the deal doesn’t get done, it sounds like it was a pretty fun night.

Kleinfeld was one of the featured speakers at the summit, which continues through Thursday in New York, London and Sydney. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Global technology; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Islamic Banking.

The Summits continue next week at the annual Global Food and Agriculture Summit with guests in the U.S. and Asia from March 16-19; and the Funds Summit in Luxembourg on March 17-18.

In the M&A world, this is where you want to be.

Kinross Gold’s CEO Tye Burt said at the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit on Wednesday that as far as mergers and acquisitions go, his company is in a pretty good place — there are more deals hitting his desk, sellers are getting more motivated and Kinross, the third-largest of the Canadian gold miners, has the cash to do a little shopping.

While Burt did not expect to be party to one of those huge mega-deals, he did indicate the company was keeping its options open — and was listening for bargains.

Burt was one of the featured speakers at the summit, which continues through Thursday in New York, London and Sydney. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Global technology; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Food and Beverages.

The Summits continue next week at the annual Global Food and Agriculture Summit with guests in the U.S. and Asia from March 16-19; and the Funds Summit in Luxembourg on March 17-18.

Mining and construction equipment maker Joy Global actually had a pretty good week for itself.

The company released its first-quarter results last Wednesday, which topped Wall Street’s expectations and sent the shares up more than 15 percent.

Company Chief Executive Michael Sutherlin, speaking as the kick-off guest to the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit, said it seems that Joy Global should be able to hit its numbers in 2009.

However, Sutherlin said 2010 provides a less clear picture, which will likely cause the company to rethink its size and staffing levels for the short term. Sutherlin said the company was reviewing its structure now and expects to have more to say about jobs and plants by the middle of the year.

Joy Global, which makes giant shovels, drills and draglines to extract coal, copper, iron ore, oil sands and other minerals, said new aftermarket orders received and booked for the surface and underground businesses rose 13 percent in the quarter.

Sutherlin was one of the featured speakers at the summit, which continues through Thursday in New York, London and Sydney. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Global technology; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Food and Beverages.

It seems that any sentence about Las Vegas, the people who work there or the stocks of the companies that run the big casinos ends better with the word “baby”. It’s almost like you can hear Frank saying it to Dino on their way into some smoky, after-hours cocktail party.

So, even though Bill Lerner, casino and gaming analyst at Deutsche Bank didn’t exactly end his comments on casino stock picks like Sinatra might have … well, it’s Vegas, baby!

Lerner, speaking at the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit in New York, spoke extensively about the stocks in the gaming sector and identified the ones he thinks have the best chance at near- and longer-term success.

Lerner was one of the featured speakers at the summit, which continues through Wednesday in our New York headquarters. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Mining; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Food and Beverages.

Trying to compare one recession or economic downswing to another is a little like trying to decide which hurricane was the worst.

I mean, if you were sitting in the middle of Hurricane Katrina, it’s not going to matter too much if Hurricane Hugo’s winds were 10 miles an hour faster. They both weren’t a lot of fun.

So it was on Tuesday when Doug Parker, chief executive of US Airways Group, tried to distinguish between the current recession and previous ones. No one wants to be too close to the eye when the howling starts.

Parker, speaking to the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit in New York, said this slowdown is bad — as was the one in 2001-2002, although for diferent reasons.

Parker was one of the featured speakers at the summit, which continues through Wednesday in our New York headquarters. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Mining; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Food and Beverages.

The state of the airline industry and travel overall is not poised for a rapid takeoff in 2009 and looks like it will remain in rough shape until next year, said Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, chief executive of Air France-KLM, on Monday at the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit.

The head of Europe’s largest airline, who became CEO in January, said he was unsure when things would turn around, but warned that both passenger and cargo metrics were down for the airline.

Gourgeon also said that while there is still some business travel out there, many passengers are trading down from more expensive, high-end to coach, or less expensive travel.

Gourgeon was one of the featured speakers at the summit, which continues through Wednesday in our New York headquarters. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Mining; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Food and Beverages.

This has not been a cheerless week — after all, Chicago is a pretty fun place to be.

In reviewing many of the stories, though, from this week’s Reuters Manufacturing and Transportation Summit, one gets the idea that all was gloom in the Windy City.

So, while there have been many discussions this week about opportunities for growth and hopes of better things to come, the situation at many of the nation’s largest manufacturing companies remains pretty serious.

Such was the case presented by Brad Bell, chief financial officer for Nalco Co, a global provider of water treatment services, chemicals and equipment programs for industries.

The company’s products and services are used ito prevent corrosion, contamination and the build up of deposits in production. Essentially, there’s not a single sector of the manufacturing world that doesn’t have something water-related that is, or could be, made by Nalco.

So that’s a pretty good space to be in … when times are good. It creates some unique challenges (a popular word this week) during tough times.

While Bell sees some positives, he also thinks that this is not the end of the crisis and more tough days are ahead.

Bell was one of the featured speakers on Wednesday at the annual Manufacturing and Transportation Summit, which continues through Thursday in our Chicago offices. The Summit program is in its fifth year, and in 2009 will include top-level executives from  industries and sectors including everything from Infrastructure; to Mining; to Investing in India, China, Japan and Russia; to Food and Beverages.