The two shared humble origins. Raised by a single mother who worked as a part-time teacher in Toronto, Boyer worked odd jobs as a boy and remembers the first pair of white and blue Nike sneakers he bought for $100 when he was 12.

At about the same age, Ko fled the famine of Chairman Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward. In 1961, he and his grandmother left Eastern China's Fujian province, where he recalls a year in which the only food in his village was sweet potatoes. They made their way to the then-British colony of Hong Kong. Ko's not sure whether his age is 61 or 63 because of conflicting information about his date of birth.

By 2010, Ko was mulling a boutique investment bank backed by the muscle and deal flow of a Chinese state-owned enterprise coupled with the market savvy and access to institutional money of foreign bankers.

"I realized there is room for a local bank, but it would take years to build," said Ko, Reorient Group's chairman, wearing a company-branded fleece vest under his suit jacket. "How do we start? We need a state-owned enterprise."

A friend at the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, or SASAC, which oversees China's biggest government-controlled companies excluding banks, introduced Ko to Chengtong.

German Navy Officer

For overseas expertise, Ko turned to an old associate: Cantor's Parpart, who says he's a former German Navy officer and later worked promoting the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars, with the Reagan Administration.

Boyer tried to sell the deal to Lutnick until negotiations broke down in August 2010, according to the court judgment.

Ko kept pursuing the deal.

"He's like a terrier," Parpart said. "He's very persistent."

Wall Street bankers were sought by Chengtong so it can better understand capital markets, Chen Shengjie, vice president of its asset management company, said in an interview in Hong Kong. Raising money to cover workers' pensions and minimizing job losses is as important as making a profit when restructuring China's state enterprises, he said.