Employment contract

Would very much appreciate some advice please. I have lived in Hong Kong all my life (except when studying). I have been working for the same company for 9 years and in my contract, it specifies that I will not be allowed to work in a similar line of business within a certain distance radius and also timespan, once I have left the company.


My question is whether this is legally binding as it prevents me from working in most places on Hong Kong island and if it is binding, does is still apply once the present contract has expired and I choose to leave the company?


Appreciate any help with this matter. Thanks

This cannot be enforced as it could deny you a source of income or impose a hardship of travel on you. You could imagine a company saying that you could not work within 100km meaning you could only work in China.

It cannot be enforced, they may try to bluff you and quote your contract but just suggest you will go to court and watch them back down.

Once your contract finishes they have no legal binding over you. It can be argued about copyrighted materials etc but changing jobs cannot be enforced.

You need to get advice from someone practicing contract law in HK. I have known a 3 month period to be legal and enforced in Australia with a colleague who moved to the opposition. This was in the oil and gas industry.

there are some anti-competitive clauses written into some contracts. these usually appear in "sensitive" positions. They normally only apply to voluntary departures. In cases of involuntary departures, they are usually waived by the company. The flip side (or the enforcement) side of the contract is usually back dated incentive pay. (very common in the financial industry.) In other words, if you do not satisfy the exit conditions in the contract, the back pay will be forfeited. Normal practice (voluntary departure) is you get your new employer to pickup those exit costs. For involuntary departure, you negotiate for your held back pay at time of departure. The employer can hold you to the wording of the contract. If there is no held back pay, there really is very little the employer can do to prevent you from taking another job. If we are picking bones, maybe in some sensitive positions the previous employer can sue under "trade secrete" infringement.

[UPDATE] Please note that fee quotes stated in historic postings may be out-of-date.


All of your rights flow from the EXACT wording of the contract against the background of the law regarding restrictive covenants.....the test for such covenants is "reasonableness" of the territory; type of restriction and the time the said restriction is in place......if EITHER of these three factors are found to be unreasonable, the court will typically ignore the covenant as against public policy.......


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