香港明星補習教師身價超千萬美元
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.
訴訟；數百萬美元的人才爭奪戰；出現在全城各處廣告牌上的名人。這聽上去好像是好萊塢(Hollywood)，但實際上說的是香港離奇的、關係重大的超級補習教師圈子。
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，教育是一項重要的產業，“虎媽虎爸”們會付出大量精力和金錢爭取讓他們的孩子在關鍵的大學入學考試中得到最高分。最優秀的補習教師能掙到銀行家一樣的薪水，並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，隨着人口迅速老齡化，多年的經濟快速增長逐漸降溫，香港兩家知名補習公司圍繞一名頂級補習教師展開的爭奪戰已經公開化。
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.
現代教育(Modern Education)上週在當地報紙刊登一封公開信，向香港最受歡迎的補習名師之一林溢欣(Lam Yat-yan)開出8500萬港元（合1100萬美元）的年薪，希望他從競爭對手遵理集團(Beacon Group)那裏跳槽過來、並吸引2.5萬名學生來報名。
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.
現代教育的母公司於2011年在香港證交所上市。在現代教育向這名28歲的中文補習教師拋出橄欖枝前，遵理剛剛申請舉行自己的首次公開發行(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.”
林溢欣髮型時尚、衣着得體，看上去更像是一位男孩樂隊的歌手，而不是教師。他的擁躉很多。“我的朋友們把他當作上帝一樣崇拜，”林溢欣的一名前學生Coby Lam表示，“我的一個朋友在上他的課後提高了分數，因此我也報名去上了。”
Tiffany Lai, another former student, said she joined the bandwagon along with most of her classmates because she was afraid she would miss out.
另一名前學生Tiffany Lai表示，她與班裏大多數同學都去參加補習的原因是她擔心會錯過機會。
“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.”
“我認爲他很健談，這就是他最大的賣點，”她表示，“我看到有人甚至在他的一些視頻課上哭，這都是因爲他說的東西激勵人心。”
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.
有了這樣的口碑，難怪這些補習學校會比Facebook或特斯拉(Tesla)等由創始人領導的公司更加擔心“關鍵人才風險”。
Star tutors have to sign non-compete clauses and several poaching attempts have escalated into messy legal disputes.
明星補習教師必須簽訂競業禁止條款，數次挖角嘗試已升級爲混亂的法律糾紛。
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.
遵理在招股書中披露，上一財年，在該公司3.28億港元的收入中，頂級補習教師貢獻了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.
該公司警告潛在投資者：“一旦這些補習教師流失，可能會令報名學生數量大幅下滑，並對我們的業務造成重大負面影響。”
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.
補習教師一般從每名學生身上獲得佣金，視頻技術的採用使得他們能夠擴大影響範圍。遵理錄下了林溢欣的一堂現場課，而後將其重複播出了18次，觀看這部視頻的學生在付4堂課總計590港元的學費時可獲得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“公平合理的工作環境”，他就想留在這裏。他在Facebook上告訴他的6.7萬粉絲稱：“對我而言，多賺5000萬或8000萬沒什麼不同。”
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多家補習機構，主要業務是高中生補習，但遵理委託市場研究機構歐睿(Euromonitor)編制的一份報告顯示，由於學齡人口下降，補習機構招生數量從2010年的20.65萬人降至去年的18.03萬。
