Salary · Hong Kong · 2026
The employers who use the title General Counsel do not print that person's cash. The dated number a board can actually defend is an Executive Director average, in Hong Kong dollars first and then in US dollars.
A company asking for a general counsel salary Hong Kong figure is asking which published instrument the first offer may cite. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority's 2025 annual report answers with an average, not with a name.
HKMA Executive Director average, 2025: HK$5,881,000 (US$754,000 at about HK$7.8 = US$1). HK$10 million funds 1.70 of those average packages. The 4 September 2026 appointment places the next General Counsel at this rank from 12 February 2027. The average is not that person’s pay. HKMA Annual Report 2025 ↗
Pick an instrument. The number is how many of those packages HK$10 million funds, at the Civil Service Bureau’s about HK$7.8 = US$1. The Chief Executive lines are ceilings, not offers. The full dated table sits below.
Local currency first, US dollars at about HK$7.8 = US$1, then how many such packages HK$10 million buys. Each row is a disclosed instrument or a division of one. None of them is a survey average.
There is no published 2026 average general counsel salary for Hong Kong that survives a source check. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s organization chart in the 2025 annual report, drawn as at 31 March 2026, shows a General Counsel and four Deputy General Counsel posts under the Chief Executive. The chart revised as at 17 August 2026 still shows that General Counsel post. The remuneration table in the same annual report does not give the post a line. It gives an average.
Table 5 of the Corporate Functions chapter states the 2025 packages of senior staff in thousands of Hong Kong dollars. One Chief Executive: fixed pay HK$7,400,000, variable pay HK$2,172,000, other benefits HK$911,000, together HK$10,483,000. Three Deputy Chief Executives average fixed HK$6,482,000, variable HK$2,045,000 and other benefits HK$730,000, together HK$9,257,000. Fourteen Executive Directors average fixed HK$4,232,000, variable HK$1,111,000 and other benefits HK$538,000, together HK$5,881,000. Other benefits, the note says, cover provident fund or gratuity, medical and life insurance, and annual leave accrued. The footnote annualizes staff who did not serve a full year, and it counts the Chief Executive Officer of the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation and the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Exchange Fund Investment Office inside the senior-staff table. The average is a rank. It is not a biography.
The Civil Service Bureau’s pay-scale pages state that dollars on those pages are Hong Kong dollars and that about HK$7.8 = US$1. Every US-dollar figure below uses that rate, rounded to the nearest US$100. On the Executive Director average the three pieces round to US$542,600, US$142,400 and US$69,000, which sum to the package’s US$754,000. The Chief Executive’s HK$10,483,000 is US$1,344,000. The Deputy Chief Executive average of HK$9,257,000 is US$1,186,800. The Linked Exchange Rate System is a band. The conversion is the Civil Service Bureau rate, not a mid-point inside that band.
| Seat | Cash (HKD) | USD | Seats / HK$10m | What the number measures | Dated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HKMA Executive Director average, total package | HK$5,881,000 | US$754,000 | 1.70 | Published average of 14 Executive Directors: fixed HK$4,232,000, variable HK$1,111,000, other benefits HK$538,000. Not a named General Counsel. | 2025 |
| HKMA Executive Director average, fixed pay only | HK$4,232,000 | US$542,600 | 2.36 | Fixed-pay column of the same 14-person average. Variable pay and benefits sit on top. | 2025 |
| SFC Executive Director equal split | HK$5,928,667 | US$760,100 | 1.69 | HK$35,572,000 aggregate for six Executive Directors, divided by six and rounded to the nearest dollar. Legal Services is one of the six. The note does not say so in dollars. | Year ended 31 Mar 2026 |
| HKMA Deputy Chief Executive average | HK$9,257,000 | US$1,186,800 | 1.08 | Average of 3 Deputy Chief Executives. The rank above Executive Director. Not a General Counsel package. | 2025 |
| SFC Chief Executive Officer, total | HK$9,574,000 | US$1,227,400 | 1.04 | Salaries HK$6,758,000, discretionary pay HK$2,140,000, retirement HK$676,000. Prior year HK$9,251,000. Not the Legal Services director. | Year ended 31 Mar 2026 |
| HKMA Chief Executive, total package | HK$10,483,000 | US$1,344,000 | 0.95 | One Chief Executive: fixed HK$7,400,000, variable HK$2,172,000, other benefits HK$911,000. | 2025 |
| Law Officer, DL6 floor, annualized | HK$3,525,000 | US$451,900 | 2.84 | Directorate (Legal) point DL6 floor HK$293,750 a month from 1 April 2026, times 12. A civil-service Law Officer, not a company general counsel. | 1 Apr 2026 |
| HKEX Chief Executive Officer, total emoluments charged | HK$37,784,000 | US$4,844,100 | 0.26 | Cash-based remuneration plus share-based compensation charged to the income statement. The Group General Counsel is not this line. | Year ended 31 Dec 2025 |
Arithmetic is HK$10,000,000 divided by the cash in the row, shown to two decimal places. The SFC equal split is HK$35,572,000 divided by six, rounded to the nearest dollar. The Law Officer row is a monthly scale times twelve. See the sources.
Law Officer, DL6 floor, annualized
HK$293,750 a month from 1 April 2026, times 12. Civil service, not a company GC.
Civil Service Bureau, Directorate (Legal) ↗The two Executive Director neighborhoods are the cluster that matters. HK$5,928,667 minus HK$5,881,000 is HK$47,667. One number is published as an average of 14 people. The other exists only if a reader divides an aggregate of six by six. A compensation committee that treats them as the same instrument will be right about the neighborhood and wrong about the evidence. The HKMA figure can be footnoted to Table 5. The SFC figure has to be footnoted as a division, and the footnote has to say that Executive Director, Legal Services is one of the six and is not broken out.
On 4 September 2026 the HKMA announced that the Financial Secretary, on the advice of the Governance Sub-Committee of the Exchange Fund Advisory Committee, had approved the next General Counsel at the rank of Executive Director, with effect from 12 February 2027. The release describes the work — legal advice on all aspects of the Authority’s functions — and does not describe the cash. Until that person has served a year that appears in a later Table 5, the 2025 average of HK$5,881,000 is the newest printed neighborhood for the rank the appointment names. It is still an average of 14, and the sitting General Counsel is not identified inside those 14.
The General Counsel is on the organization chart. The cash on the same report is an average of fourteen Executive Directors.
Four payer types actually seat a Hong Kong general counsel or the legal chief a board confuses with one. Only two of them print a 2025 or 2026 dollar figure, and only one of those figures is an average of the rank the next HKMA General Counsel will hold.
Printed rankNamed person
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority prints an Executive Director average and, from 12 February 2027, will seat its next General Counsel at that rank. The Securities and Futures Commission prints six Executive Directors as one aggregate, and one of those six holds Legal Services.
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing identifies a Group General Counsel in the senior-management biographies and leaves that office out of the remuneration table. Companies Ordinance section 383 prices directors. A general counsel who is not a director is absent from the note.
Licensed managers and listed operating companies advertise counsel and head-of-legal titles and withhold the Hong Kong-dollar figure. Those ads belong to the in-house counsel page. They are not a general-counsel band.
The Directorate (Legal) grid from 1 April 2026 prices a Law Officer, not a company general counsel. It is the only fully individual legal-chief salary the government prints. The market page owns that grade. It appears here as the number a board sometimes copies by mistake.
The Securities and Futures Commission’s 2025–26 annual report, financial statements approved on 1 June 2026, seats an Executive Director, Legal Services on the board. Note 7 then reports directors’ emoluments for the year ended 31 March 2026 without naming portfolios. The Chief Executive Officer’s line is salaries, allowances and benefits of HK$6,758,000, discretionary pay of HK$2,140,000 and retirement-scheme contributions of HK$676,000, together HK$9,574,000 (US$1,227,400). The prior-year comparative on the same note is HK$9,251,000. Six Executive Directors together received salaries of HK$25,588,000, discretionary pay of HK$7,432,000 and retirement contributions of HK$2,552,000, an aggregate of HK$35,572,000. The equal split is HK$5,928,667. A reader who wants the Legal Services director’s pay will not find it. The five highest-paid individuals, the Chief Executive Officer and four senior managers, aggregate HK$35,785,000. That sentence also does not identify a general counsel.
The Law Society’s Profile of the Profession, as of 31 August 2026, records 12,160 solicitors with a practicing certificate and 8,402 of them in private practice. The difference, 3,758, is the not-in-private-practice stock. It includes government lawyers, and it is not a census of people titled General Counsel. The Listing Committee Report 2025 records 119 new listings and IPO funds of HK$285.8 billion. That volume is why an issuer wants a general counsel in the building. It is not the general counsel’s salary. The demand calendar sits on the Hong Kong legal market page. The counsel-level cash cells, which are a different rank, sit on the in-house counsel salary page.
Your first offer is a seat count. If the cash budget is HK$10 million, you have funded 1.70 HKMA Executive Director averages, 1.69 SFC equal-splits, or 2.84 Law Officer salaries — and you have funded 0.26 of the HKEX Chief Executive Officer.
Your title will not appear as a line in next year’s remuneration table unless you are a director, or unless you sit inside a rank the authority has chosen to average.
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing is a 2025 case of a General Counsel title sitting in the senior-management section and not in the cash table. The statute explains why that pattern is normal at issuers, and why it is the wrong pattern to copy onto the HKMA.
Companies Ordinance section 383, in the verified text current to 23 May 2025, requires the notes to the financial statements for a financial year to contain the information prescribed by the Companies (Disclosure of Information about Benefits of Directors) Regulation (Cap. 622G) on directors’ emoluments, directors’ retirement benefits, termination payments, and consideration paid to third parties for making a person available as a director. HKEX Main Board Listing Rule 18.28 then requires the listed issuer to give directors’ and past directors’ emoluments by name: fees, basic salaries and benefits, pension contributions, discretionary bonuses, inducements, and compensation for loss of office. Note 2 of that rule points the analysis back to section 383(1)(a) to (c). The rule prices directors. A general counsel who does not sit on the board is outside it.
HKEX’s Annual Report 2025, filed with the exchange on 16 March 2026, identifies a Group General Counsel and Group Chief Sustainability Officer among the senior managers and prints remuneration for the Chief Executive Officer and five other senior managers. The combined legal-and-sustainability office is not one of those six lines. The Chief Executive Officer’s total emoluments charged to the consolidated income statement for 2025 were HK$37,784,000, which is US$4,844,100 at about HK$7.8 = US$1. Cash-based remuneration and the share-based award are both inside that charge. HK$10 million is 0.26 of it. A board that anchors a general counsel to the chief executive’s charge is anchoring to a different office, a different instrument, and a number 6.42 times the HKMA Executive Director average (HK$37,784,000 divided by HK$5,881,000).
The SFC’s position is the mirror image and still not a named salary. Legal Services is an Executive Director portfolio, so the person is inside note 7’s aggregate of six, and the reader still cannot lift a single dollar figure off the page. The five-highest-paid band for the year ended 31 March 2026 puts one individual between HK$9,500,001 and HK$10,000,000, two between HK$6,500,001 and HK$7,000,000, and two between HK$6,000,001 and HK$6,500,000. The Chief Executive Officer’s disclosed total of HK$9,574,000 sits in the top band. The note does not say which band, if any, contains Legal Services. Using the top band as a general-counsel salary repeats the HKEX mistake one tier down.
Banks and licensed corporations are a third silence. The in-house counsel page records the 2026 advertisements that printed a counsel or general-counsel title and withheld the Hong Kong-dollar figure. A private-company band is not in those advertisements. The public record, as of the 2025 and 2025–26 reports, supports the Executive Director neighborhood and refuses a named general counsel.
Salaries tax, the provident-fund cap and the March 2026 staff award all sit on top of the HK$5,881,000 average. None of them replaces it, and none of them is a reason to quote the Law Officer scale at a company.
GovHK’s salaries-tax page, last revised in May 2026, puts the year of assessment 2026/27 standard-rate zone for a single person at HK$2,132,500 of income, before the effect of deductions. Married taxpayers reach it at HK$3,365,000 on the same page. From the year of assessment 2024/25 onwards, the two-tier standard rates are 15 percent on the first HK$5,000,000 of net income and 16 percent on the remainder, and the taxpayer pays the lower of that bill and the progressive bill (2, 6, 10, 14 and 17 percent). The HKMA Executive Director average of HK$5,881,000 is above the single-person threshold and above the HK$5,000,000 tier. The counsel-level cells on the in-house page sit below the single-person threshold. That is one more reason the two pages are not interchangeable: a compensation committee that has been living in the counsel band is not yet in the general-counsel tax conversation.
The Mandatory Provident Fund Authority caps mandatory contributions at HK$1,500 a month for the employee and HK$1,500 a month for the employer, HK$18,000 a year on the employer side. HK$18,000 is 0.31 percent of HK$5,881,000. At this rank the cap is a rounding item next to variable pay of HK$1,111,000. It is still a line the offer should show, because candidates add it, and because Table 5’s “other benefits” already include provident fund or gratuity and will be double-counted if the company stacks a full MPF quote on top of the average without saying so.
The 25 March 2026 HKMA pay review is the other stack companies import by accident. Fixed Pay of HKMA staff rises by a general 2.65 percent, a further 1.35 percent of Fixed Pay is set aside for good performers, and Variable Pay equal to 20.04 percent of Total Pay will be paid on 2025 performance. Variable Pay in that sentence is a one-off award to staff who met the performance bar. It is not a restatement of the HK$1,111,000 already inside the 2025 Executive Director average, and the release does not apply the percentages to the General Counsel. A 2.65 percent lift on the fixed column of HK$4,232,000 would be about HK$112,000. That product is not in the release. It is what a committee is tempted to scribble, and it should be labeled as a scribble if anyone writes it down.
The Directorate (Legal) scale is the clean individual number, and it is the wrong office. From 1 April 2026 the DL6 floor is HK$293,750 a month and the top of that point is HK$302,465. Twelve times the floor is HK$3,525,000 (US$451,900). Twelve times the top is HK$3,629,580. HK$10 million funds 2.84 salaries at the floor. The Department of Justice’s Government Counsel grade, which the market page treats in full, sits on the Master Pay Scale below this directorate point. A company that “matches government” without saying whether it means Government Counsel entry or Law Officer DL6 has not matched anything. The partner-compensation page uses the same directorate grid as the cash a general counsel can set beside a partner draw. That comparison is about tax character. It is not a suggestion that DL6 is the 2026 general-counsel offer.
The Hong Kong in-house line has one set of figures. The firm's general-counsel clock, across 38 searches since 2017, is a second set. A Hong Kong general-counsel file has to satisfy both, and the cash has to be a number the company will say out loud.
Sartori & Partners has worked the Hong Kong in-house market for eight years. Over the trailing three years the line closed 17 searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 4 to 7 months. Median time from offer to signature is 16 working days. Counter-offer incidence is 30 percent. Of those 17 files, 11 were counsel or senior-counsel seats at non-solicitor employers and 6 were head-of-legal or first-in-house seats. 4 of those 6 carried a General Counsel title. The counsel majority is why the in-house cash table and the general-counsel cash table can share a line without sharing a number.
Since 2017 the firm has completed 400+ placements (230+ in-house), 52 of them general counsel or chief legal officer. On that firm-wide general-counsel book the shortlist clock is 24 days and the median time to an accepted offer is 11 weeks, inside a range of 8 to 16 weeks. Offer acceptance is 96 percent. Retention of placed in-house leaders is 97 percent at 12 months and 91 percent at 24 months. An HKEX-listed bank in Hong Kong hired its general counsel in 12 weeks, with the shortlist on the 24-day clock. The cash named on the first approach was the HKMA Executive Director average of HK$5,881,000, not the exchange Chief Executive Officer’s HK$37,784,000. The 12 weeks sit inside the firm-wide 8-to-16-week range and inside the Hong Kong line’s longer 4 to 7 months, which the counsel files still stretch. The committee’s first number was an average of fourteen people. We hired against that average, and the person we hired is still in the seat.
The map behind the cohort is separate from the cohort. Sartori’s Hong Kong coverage is about 5,000 lawyers. It records title and employer. It does not record cash, which is why a mapped General Counsel is not a salary. The interview base used above is one cohort of 250. Quarterly surveys have run since 2019. The global map is 1,480,000+ lawyers. Those three counts are not interchangeable, and a sentence that adds them is not a finding.
The commercial terms are the same on every retained general-counsel search. The fee is 25–30 percent of the hire’s total first-year compensation. Thirty percent of the fee is paid as a retainer at engagement and is kept if the company cancels. The replacement guarantee on a retained general-counsel search is 12 months. Interim and fractional coverage, where the company is not yet ready to fund HK$5,881,000, is a different instrument and a different conversation. The company side of either conversation starts at a briefing, not at a circulated salary survey.
There is no printed individual general counsel salary Hong Kong figure for 2026. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s 2025 annual report averages 14 Executive Directors at HK$5,881,000 (fixed HK$4,232,000, variable HK$1,111,000, other benefits HK$538,000), about US$754,000 at the Civil Service Bureau’s about HK$7.8 = US$1. On 4 September 2026 the Authority appointed its next General Counsel at Executive Director rank from 12 February 2027 and did not print that person’s cash. The Securities and Futures Commission, for the year ended 31 March 2026, aggregates six Executive Directors at HK$35,572,000. Dividing by six gives HK$5,928,667. That split is arithmetic. It is not the Legal Services director’s disclosed pay.
HK$10 million funds 1.70 HKMA Executive Director average packages at the 2025 figure of HK$5,881,000, or 2.36 seats if the budget is matched to fixed pay of HK$4,232,000 alone. The same HK$10 million funds 1.69 equal-splits of the SFC’s six-director aggregate, 2.84 Law Officer salaries at the 1 April 2026 DL6 floor of HK$3,525,000 a year, 0.95 of one HKMA Chief Executive package (HK$10,483,000), and 0.26 of the HKEX Chief Executive Officer’s HK$37,784,000 total emoluments charged for 2025. Only the first of those is the rank the HKMA has now attached to its next General Counsel.
Companies Ordinance (Cap. 622) section 383 requires the notes to contain directors’ emoluments, retirement benefits and termination payments, as prescribed by Cap. 622G. HKEX Main Board Listing Rule 18.28 then requires those director amounts by name. A general counsel enters that table by becoming a director. HKEX’s Annual Report 2025, filed 16 March 2026, identifies a Group General Counsel and Group Chief Sustainability Officer in the senior-management biographies and does not give that combined office a line in the senior-management remuneration table. The Chief Executive Officer’s total emoluments charged were HK$37,784,000. That is the number the report prints. It is not a general-counsel band.
A single person reaches the salaries-tax standard-rate zone at HK$2,132,500 of income in the year of assessment 2026/27, on the GovHK rates page last revised in May 2026. From 2024/25 onwards the two-tier standard rates are 15 percent on the first HK$5,000,000 of net income and 16 percent on the remainder, if that bill is lower than progressive rates. The HKMA Executive Director average of HK$5,881,000 sits above both the single-person threshold and the HK$5,000,000 tier. Mandatory Provident Fund contributions are capped at HK$1,500 a month, HK$18,000 a year, which is 0.31 percent of that average. The cap is a cost-to-company fact. It is not a deduction computed for a named general counsel, because the deductions are not in the annual report.
Sartori has worked the Hong Kong in-house market for eight years. Of 17 closed Hong Kong in-house searches over three years, 11 were counsel or senior-counsel seats and 6 were head-of-legal or first-in-house seats. 4 of those 6 carried a General Counsel title. Completion on the 17 is 93 percent. The typical file on the line runs 4 to 7 months, median offer-to-acceptance is 16 working days, and counter-offer incidence is 30 percent. Across the firm’s 38 general-counsel and chief-legal-officer searches since 2017, the median to an accepted offer is 11 weeks (range 8 to 16) and the shortlist clock is 24 days. An HKEX-listed bank in Hong Kong hired its general counsel in 12 weeks on that 24-day shortlist.
Name a dollar figure on the first approach, and name which instrument it is. The defensible public neighborhood in 2026 is the HKMA Executive Director average of HK$5,881,000, or the SFC six-director aggregate read as an equal split of HK$5,928,667, not the HKEX Chief Executive Officer’s HK$37,784,000 and not the Law Officer grid unless the seat is a Law Officer. The search is retained. The fee is 25–30 percent of the hire’s total first-year compensation. Thirty percent of that fee is paid at engagement and kept if the company cancels. A retained general-counsel search carries a 12-month replacement guarantee. Acceptance on the firm’s offers is 96 percent.
Executive Director cash comes from the HKMA 2025 annual report and the SFC 2025-26 financial statements. The appointment date is the HKMA release of 4 September 2026. Seat counts are HK$10 million divided by those cash figures at about HK$7.8 = US$1.
Each cash figure is a named instrument: a 14-person average, a six-person aggregate, a chief-executive total, or a monthly civil-service point times twelve. The SFC equal split is labeled as a division. US dollars use the Civil Service Bureau rate and no other. Counsel-level advertisements are on the in-house page and are not re-tabulated here.
Counsel cash that is not the general counsel, the civil-service grade a board sometimes copies, and the desk that runs the search.
The four printed counsel and senior-counsel cells. None of them is a General Counsel line, and the HKMA General Counsel advertisement is recorded there as cash not printed.
Read the counsel cellsSolicitor stocks, the Government Counsel ladder, and the listing volumes that make an issuer want a general counsel. The salary is not on that page.
Read the market pageHow a retained search prices the first offer on a disclosed instrument and keeps the Hong Kong in-house clock separate from a chief executive's package.
Brief a Hong Kong GC searchBrief a Hong Kong GC search
Whether you are hiring the first general counsel or replacing one, we put HK$5,881,000 or a labeled alternative in the first conversation and run the search on the Hong Kong in-house clock. Retained. Confidential.
