In the measured rhythms of institutional reinvention, HSBC has chosen to release its Singapore life and health insurance operations to Germany's Allianz for S$2.7 billion — a transaction that speaks less to distress than to deliberate self-definition. Under CEO Georges Elhedery, the bank is asking a question that large institutions rarely pause to ask: not what can we own, but what should we be? The answer, for now, means yielding a profitable foothold in one of Asia's most coveted insurance markets in exchange for sharper focus and stronger capital — while Allianz, in turn, inherits what year