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Published Feb 18 2026
Centerview Partners, the elite New York M&A advisory boutique, had crafted for Kathryn Shiber a working arrangement that would strike many overworked junior bankers as unimaginably civilised.
In 2020, just after Shiber started as a junior analyst, Centerview granted her a guaranteed nine-hour period in which to sleep each night, to manage her diagnosed mood and anxiety disorder. In exchange, she agreed to be available to work every other moment, seven days a week.
Less than three weeks after Centerview implemented those terms, Shiber was summoned to an afternoon video call where she was terminated. Centerview’s chief operating officer chastised the then 21-year-old for even applying for an investment banking job given her requirements for rest. Shiber then sued for disability discrimination under federal and state law.
The jury trial in federal court in New York, due to start next week, will add fuel to a simmering debate over working conditions that ambitious 20-somethings endure for high pay and high status jobs.
Kathryn Shiber’s jury trial is set to begin next week © Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images
“There is a genuine dispute [about] whether the ability to be available at all hours of the day and to work long, unpredictable hours is an essential function of the analyst role,” wrote federal judge Edgardo Ramos in October when he ordered the case to move forward.
Working conditions have been a years-long source of contention on Wall Street. In 2021 a group of first-year investment banking analysts at Goldman Sachs produced a slide deck about their long hours working from home during the pandemic and lack of sleep that went viral online, prompting a rethink in the industry. Some banks capped hours and introduced a “protected” weekend day off.
It was “incredibly unusual” for a case of this type to make it all the way to trial, said Katherine Macfarlane, a law professor and director of the disability law and policy programme at Syracuse University College of Law. She said judges often dismissed claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which Shiber is citing, at an earlier stage in the legal process.
She said it would be “slightly absurd [to be] in court arguing that people have to be available 24 hours a day, that’s your expectation . . . The number of people that would preclude is pretty big.”
Shiber has said her termination permanently derailed her investment banking career and is demanding pay that she would have earned in the next decade, back pay and damages for “emotional distress”, adding up to millions of dollars.
Centerview has responded that its junior bankers, like their peers across Wall Street, “are known to work long and often unpredictable hours, a consequence of the job of an investment banker”.
It said the guaranteed nine-hour sleep window was designed as only a short-term solution when Shiber first mentioned her sleep needs.
Working conditions, including long hours, have been a years-long source of contention on Wall Street © Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg
The bank said it soon became clear that it would not work in the longer term. There was “no reasonable accommodation available” that would enable her to perform the role if she needed eight to nine hours of consistent sleep per night, it said in filings.
A central question at trial was likely to be “whether it is actually essential that someone be available at three in the morning” or whether those hours are simply a cultural norm, said John Jacobi, a visiting professor at Columbia Law School.
Another important question would be whether the bank had discussed Shiber’s needs with her and tried to accommodate them, Jacobi said, referring to a legal standard known as an “interactive process”.
Expected witnesses include multiple Centerview bankers who supervised Shiber as well as duelling health professionals familiar with Shiber’s medical condition.
In a deposition that offers a glimpse into the at-times personal nature of the questioning in such cases, litigators for Centerview from the law firm Quinn Emanuel pressed Shiber about how much time she spent on Instagram and TikTok and her experience of grief. Quinn Emanuel also asked Shiber if she had lied to a school physician in order to be awarded extra time for exams, which she denied.
Shiber, a Dartmouth College graduate, had been working on Centerview’s “Project Dragon”, which was a mandate to defend the multibillion-dollar North Carolina utility Duke Energy from a possible proxy contest led by hedge fund Elliott Management.
In late August 2020, Shiber logged off after midnight without messaging two more senior bankers whom she was working with on a presentation for Duke. Shiber was reprimanded the next morning, after which she called Centerview’s human resources department to inform it of her medical need for sleep.
The lead banker of Project Dragon, Tony Kim, who is now co-president of Centerview, quickly designed what the firm would call a “guardrails” programme that excused Shiber from work between midnight and 9am.
Emails produced later as well as deposition testimony from Centerview bankers showed that the firm eventually believed that Shiber’s nightly absence was undermining both her personal development and the cohesion of the project.
Shiber’s lawyers have maintained that the accommodation was reasonable.
Centerview has countered that long and erratic hours are a crucial component of the analyst role and that state and federal disability law does not require an employer to take on a worker who cannot meet what the employer believes are basic obligations.
“Junior bankers obviously don’t need permission to go to sleep, but are expected to work together and communicate properly with teammates,” Centerview said in a statement.
Judge Ramos said in his denial of Centerview’s bid to prevail on summary judgment that the firm had never formally codified what the working-hour expectations were for junior analysts and Shiber has said she was unaware that she could be required at times to work consistently into the early morning hours.
Centerview, founded in 2006 by Blair Effron and Robert Pruzan, is widely considered to be the most elite US merger advisory boutique, with annual revenues now exceeding $2bn even as it has fewer employees than rivals such as Moelis & Co and Lazard.
A focus in the trial will be which Centerview executives made the decision to jettison Shiber. The firm is attempting to keep Pruzan, the co-founder who handles most of its administrative matters, from testifying, arguing that he was not a key decision maker in the Shiber matter.
Shiber in a court filing said she had earned $582,000 since she was terminated by Centerview more than 5 years ago, including an employment stint in the finance group at Google.
“Centerview’s act of terminating Shiber at the very start of her career had and will continue to have a devastating impact on her earnings for the rest of her work life,” her lawyers wrote in a recent court filing.
Source (Archive)
Published Feb 18 2026
Centerview Partners, the elite New York M&A advisory boutique, had crafted for Kathryn Shiber a working arrangement that would strike many overworked junior bankers as unimaginably civilised.
In 2020, just after Shiber started as a junior analyst, Centerview granted her a guaranteed nine-hour period in which to sleep each night, to manage her diagnosed mood and anxiety disorder. In exchange, she agreed to be available to work every other moment, seven days a week.
Less than three weeks after Centerview implemented those terms, Shiber was summoned to an afternoon video call where she was terminated. Centerview’s chief operating officer chastised the then 21-year-old for even applying for an investment banking job given her requirements for rest. Shiber then sued for disability discrimination under federal and state law.
The jury trial in federal court in New York, due to start next week, will add fuel to a simmering debate over working conditions that ambitious 20-somethings endure for high pay and high status jobs.
Kathryn Shiber’s jury trial is set to begin next week © Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images
“There is a genuine dispute [about] whether the ability to be available at all hours of the day and to work long, unpredictable hours is an essential function of the analyst role,” wrote federal judge Edgardo Ramos in October when he ordered the case to move forward.
Working conditions have been a years-long source of contention on Wall Street. In 2021 a group of first-year investment banking analysts at Goldman Sachs produced a slide deck about their long hours working from home during the pandemic and lack of sleep that went viral online, prompting a rethink in the industry. Some banks capped hours and introduced a “protected” weekend day off.
It was “incredibly unusual” for a case of this type to make it all the way to trial, said Katherine Macfarlane, a law professor and director of the disability law and policy programme at Syracuse University College of Law. She said judges often dismissed claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which Shiber is citing, at an earlier stage in the legal process.
She said it would be “slightly absurd [to be] in court arguing that people have to be available 24 hours a day, that’s your expectation . . . The number of people that would preclude is pretty big.”
Shiber has said her termination permanently derailed her investment banking career and is demanding pay that she would have earned in the next decade, back pay and damages for “emotional distress”, adding up to millions of dollars.
Centerview has responded that its junior bankers, like their peers across Wall Street, “are known to work long and often unpredictable hours, a consequence of the job of an investment banker”.
It said the guaranteed nine-hour sleep window was designed as only a short-term solution when Shiber first mentioned her sleep needs.
Working conditions, including long hours, have been a years-long source of contention on Wall Street © Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg
The bank said it soon became clear that it would not work in the longer term. There was “no reasonable accommodation available” that would enable her to perform the role if she needed eight to nine hours of consistent sleep per night, it said in filings.
A central question at trial was likely to be “whether it is actually essential that someone be available at three in the morning” or whether those hours are simply a cultural norm, said John Jacobi, a visiting professor at Columbia Law School.
Another important question would be whether the bank had discussed Shiber’s needs with her and tried to accommodate them, Jacobi said, referring to a legal standard known as an “interactive process”.
Expected witnesses include multiple Centerview bankers who supervised Shiber as well as duelling health professionals familiar with Shiber’s medical condition.
In a deposition that offers a glimpse into the at-times personal nature of the questioning in such cases, litigators for Centerview from the law firm Quinn Emanuel pressed Shiber about how much time she spent on Instagram and TikTok and her experience of grief. Quinn Emanuel also asked Shiber if she had lied to a school physician in order to be awarded extra time for exams, which she denied.
Shiber, a Dartmouth College graduate, had been working on Centerview’s “Project Dragon”, which was a mandate to defend the multibillion-dollar North Carolina utility Duke Energy from a possible proxy contest led by hedge fund Elliott Management.
In late August 2020, Shiber logged off after midnight without messaging two more senior bankers whom she was working with on a presentation for Duke. Shiber was reprimanded the next morning, after which she called Centerview’s human resources department to inform it of her medical need for sleep.
The lead banker of Project Dragon, Tony Kim, who is now co-president of Centerview, quickly designed what the firm would call a “guardrails” programme that excused Shiber from work between midnight and 9am.
Emails produced later as well as deposition testimony from Centerview bankers showed that the firm eventually believed that Shiber’s nightly absence was undermining both her personal development and the cohesion of the project.
Shiber’s lawyers have maintained that the accommodation was reasonable.
Centerview has countered that long and erratic hours are a crucial component of the analyst role and that state and federal disability law does not require an employer to take on a worker who cannot meet what the employer believes are basic obligations.
“Junior bankers obviously don’t need permission to go to sleep, but are expected to work together and communicate properly with teammates,” Centerview said in a statement.
Judge Ramos said in his denial of Centerview’s bid to prevail on summary judgment that the firm had never formally codified what the working-hour expectations were for junior analysts and Shiber has said she was unaware that she could be required at times to work consistently into the early morning hours.
Centerview, founded in 2006 by Blair Effron and Robert Pruzan, is widely considered to be the most elite US merger advisory boutique, with annual revenues now exceeding $2bn even as it has fewer employees than rivals such as Moelis & Co and Lazard.
A focus in the trial will be which Centerview executives made the decision to jettison Shiber. The firm is attempting to keep Pruzan, the co-founder who handles most of its administrative matters, from testifying, arguing that he was not a key decision maker in the Shiber matter.
Shiber in a court filing said she had earned $582,000 since she was terminated by Centerview more than 5 years ago, including an employment stint in the finance group at Google.
“Centerview’s act of terminating Shiber at the very start of her career had and will continue to have a devastating impact on her earnings for the rest of her work life,” her lawyers wrote in a recent court filing.
Source (Archive)
