BANKING: Those Funny V.P.s

Philadelphia’s staid old Girard Trust Co. livened up its 112th annual report last year with Helen Hokinson cartoons gently kidding the customers (TIME, Jan. 31). With this sprightly innovation, Girard Trust won the 1949 “Oscar of Industry” award for the best financial report of any U.S. financial institution, and gained readers as far away as South Africa. This week, in its 113th annual report, Girard Trust turned the tables on itself. It ran cartoons by The New Yorker’s Perry Barlow kidding its own officers, particularly vice presidents, topped things off with a guffaw at the hidebound conservatism of banks in general (see cut).