Lawsuits; multimillion-dollar battles for talent; celebrities emblazoned on billboards all over town. It sounds like Hollywood but this is the bizarre, high-stakes world of Hong Kong’s super-tutors.

诉讼；数百万美元的人才争夺战；出现在全城各处广告牌上的名人。这听上去好像是好莱坞(Hollywood)，但实际上说的是香港离奇的、关系重大的超级补习教师圈子。

Education is big business in the territory, where tiger moms (and dads) employ huge reserves of energy and money to secure top grades for their offspring in the crucial university entrance exams. The best tutors attract banker-sized salaries and the cult status of pop stars.

在香港，教育是一项重要的产业，“虎妈虎爸”们会付出大量精力和金钱争取让他们的孩子在关键的大学入学考试中得到最高分。最优秀的补习教师能挣到银行家一样的薪水，并受到流行明星般的崇拜。

But now, as years of breakneck growth tempers on the back of a rapidly ageing population, a tussle between two of Hong Kong’s best-known tuition companies for a top teacher has spilled over into the public arena.

如今，随着人口迅速老龄化，多年的经济快速增长逐渐降温，香港两家知名补习公司围绕一名顶级补习教师展开的争夺战已经公开化。

Modern Education published an open letter in local newspapers last week offering Lam Yat-yan, one of Hong Kong’s most popular tutors, an annual income of HK$85m ($11m) if he jumps ship from rival Beacon Group and lures 25,000 student enrolments.

现代教育(Modern Education)上周在当地报纸刊登一封公开信，向香港最受欢迎的补习名师之一林溢欣(Lam Yat-yan)开出8500万港元（合1100万美元）的年薪，希望他从竞争对手遵理集团(Beacon Group)那里跳槽过来、并吸引2.5万名学生来报名。

Modern Education, whose parent company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2011, made its move for Mr Lam, a 28-year-old Chinese language tutor, just after Beacon filed for its own initial public offering.

现代教育的母公司于2011年在香港证交所上市。在现代教育向这名28岁的中文补习教师抛出橄榄枝前，遵理刚刚申请举行自己的首次公开发行(IPO)。

Mr Lam, who looks more like a boy-band singer than a teacher with his fashionably coiffed hair and fitted clothes, enjoys a strong following. “I have friends who worship him like a god,” said Coby Lam, one of his former students. “A friend of mine got better grades after going to his class and that’s why I signed up for it.”

林溢欣发型时尚、衣着得体，看上去更像是一位男孩乐队的歌手，而不是教师。他的拥趸很多。“我的朋友们把他当作上帝一样崇拜，”林溢欣的一名前学生Coby Lam表示，“我的一个朋友在上他的课后提高了分数，因此我也报名去上了。”

Tiffany Lai, another former student, said she joined the bandwagon along with most of her classmates because she was afraid she would miss out.

另一名前学生Tiffany Lai表示，她与班里大多数同学都去参加补习的原因是她担心会错过机会。

“I think he’s a good talker, that’s his biggest selling point,” she said. “I saw people crying even in some of his video classes, all because of the motivational things he said.”

“我认为他很健谈，这就是他最大的卖点，”她表示，“我看到有人甚至在他的一些视频课上哭，这都是因为他说的东西激励人心。”

With testimonials like these, it is no wonder these colleges have to worry about “key person risk” even more than founder-led companies such as Facebook or Tesla Motors.

有了这样的口碑，难怪这些补习学校会比Facebook或特斯拉(Tesla)等由创始人领导的公司更加担心“关键人才风险”。

Star tutors have to sign non-compete clauses and several poaching attempts have escalated into messy legal disputes.

明星补习教师必须签订竞业禁止条款，数次挖角尝试已升级为混乱的法律纠纷。

Beacon revealed in its listing prospectus that its top tutor was responsible for generating 40 per cent of its revenue of HK$328m in the last financial year.

遵理在招股书中披露，上一财年，在该公司3.28亿港元的收入中，顶级补习教师贡献了40%。

“The loss of such tutor’s service to our group may cause a significant reduction in student enrolments and materially and adversely affect our business,” the company warned potential investors.

该公司警告潜在投资者：“一旦这些补习教师流失，可能会令报名学生数量大幅下滑，并对我们的业务造成重大负面影响。”

Tutors are typically paid commission per student and the use of video technology has allowed them to expand their reach. When Mr Lam gives a live class, Beacon records it and later rebroadcasts it as many as 18 times, with students who watch the video getting just a HK$20 discount on the HK$590 fee for four sessions.

补习教师一般从每名学生身上获得佣金，视频技术的采用使得他们能够扩大影响范围。遵理录下了林溢欣的一堂现场课，而后将其重复播出了18次，观看这部视频的学生在付4堂课总计590港元的学费时可获得20港元的折扣。

Mr Lam said he wanted to stay at Beacon as long as it provided a “fair and reasonable workplace”, telling his 67,000 fans on Facebook that “it makes no difference for me to make 50m or 80m dollars more”.

林溢欣表示，只要遵理提供“公平合理的工作环境”，他就想留在这里。他在Facebook上告诉他的6.7万粉丝称：“对我而言，多赚5000万或8000万没什么不同。”

Hong Kong has more than 900 tuition centres focused on high-school pupils but enrolments dropped from 206,500 in 2010 to 180,300 last year because of a decline in the school-age population, according to a report commissioned by Beacon and produced by Euromonitor, the market research group.

香港有900多家补习机构，主要业务是高中生补习，但遵理委托市场研究机构欧睿(Euromonitor)编制的一份报告显示，由于学龄人口下降，补习机构招生数量从2010年的20.65万人降至去年的18.03万。