The complex occupies a prime site in Central, Hong Kong, fronting what was then reclaimed land at the harbour's edge. It comprises three towers: One Exchange Square, Two Exchange Square, and Three Exchange Square, most of which is owned by Hong Kong Land with the remainder held by the government. The towers are linked at podium level, and the ground floor accommodates the Central (Exchange Square) Bus Terminus — one of Hong Kong's major public transport hubs — giving the complex a civic function that its polished lobby floors and financial tenants might otherwise obscure. The MTR's Central and Hong Kong stations connect directly to the complex underground, embedding it in the city's transit network.

The story of the plot's financing reads like a compressed version of a Hong Kong market cycle. Hong Kong Land tendered HK$4.76 billion for the site in February 1982. By early 1983, prices had fallen far enough to require debt restructuring; an eight-year loan of HK$4 billion — a record at the time — was arranged in February 1983. In December 1983, the plot was mortgaged to secure a further HK$2.5 billion loan facility. A second instalment of HK$2 billion fell due in the 1984/85 financial year. Phase Three, a 32-storey office tower of 322,000 square feet, cost a further HK$750 million. That the building was completed at all, let alone to the standard it achieved, speaks to Hong Kong Land's determination and to Hong Kong's financial resilience during a period of considerable political uncertainty.

At podium level, a shopping complex originally called The Forum served the complex for decades before being redeveloped between 2011 and 2014 into a seven-storey office building wholly occupied by Standard Chartered Bank. What remained after the conversion was the plaza outside: a landscaped roof garden with stepped terraces, fountains, and a notable collection of public sculptures. Works by Henry Moore, Ju Ming, and Dame Elisabeth Frink stand in the open air — Frink's water buffalo particularly striking, its rough-textured bronze surface catching light in ways that the surrounding glass towers do not. Lynn Chadwick's Sitting Couple, cast in bronze in 1989–1990, occupies a corner of the square with a domestic quietness that reads oddly against the scale of the towers behind it.

The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong has called Exchange Square home since the 1980s, and the complex has grown around it as a magnet for international finance. International banking and law firms fill the upper floors — Bank of Montreal, DLA Piper, Latham & Watkins, Allen & Overy among them — alongside investment managers, arbitration bodies, and the consulates of Argentina, Canada, and Japan. The Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre occupies space here too, giving the complex a dispute-resolution function alongside its deal-making one. It is a building that has come to mean finance in Central the way other Hong Kong landmarks mean tourism or culture: completely, inescapably, by accretion rather than by design.