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Covid Vaccine Race Has U.S. States Scrambling for Funding: CNBC After Hours

CNBC.com's MacKenzie Sigalos brings you the day's top business news headlines. On today's show, CNBC's Ylan Mui reports that a Covid-19 vaccine could be cleared for emergency use and shipped out before many states have the money necessary to distribute it to their residents. Plus, CNBC.com's Ari Levy breaks down how Salesforce's $27.7 billion Slack acquisition deepens its rivalry with enterprise tech powerhouse Microsoft.

Why Pfizer's Covid vaccine has been authorized in the UK but not the U.S. yet

The U.K. this week became the first country to authorize Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, likely adding pressure on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to quickly do the same.

To be sure, the U.S. and the U.K. review vaccines differently. Pfizer had been submitting data on its vaccine with BioNtech on a "rolling basis" to the U.K., meaning regulators there were able to review the data in real time and do so until there was enough evidence to support a formal authorization. A rolling review is a tool that regulators use to speed up the assessment of promising drugs or vaccines.

In the U.S., the FDA will go through every aspect of the data submitted in the application, including reviewing all safety information "to make sure there are no cracks" and everything is "solid," said Dr. Paul Offit, a voting member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which is scheduled to review Pfizer's vaccine on Dec. 10.

Salesforce acquires Slack for over $27 billion, marking cloud software vendor's largest deal ever

Salesforce is making the biggest acquisition in its 21-year history. The company announced on Tuesday that it's buying chat software developer Slack for over $27 billion.

Through a combination of cash and stock, Salesforce is purchasing Slack for $26.79 a share and .0776 shares of Salesforce, according to a statement. That comes to about $45.86 a share. Prior to initial reports of a deal last week, which led to a 38% pop in Slack's shares, the stock was trading at under $30.

The purchase marks one of the largest ever for the software industry. The biggest was IBM's $34 billion purchase of Red Hat in 2018, followed by Microsoft's $27 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016. Last year, the London Stock Exchange agreed to buy data provider Refinitiv for $27 billion, though the deal has yet to be cleared by European regulators.

$2 million T-shirt collection goes on sale at Christie's to promote Supreme auction

The most complete collection of Supreme T-shirts is being offered for sale at Christie's for about $2 million, highlighting the soaring value of the luxury streetwear brand and the growing importance of a new generation in the collectibles world.

The T-shirt collection is the only complete set of Supreme's "box-logo" T-shirts, which were released since 1994, known to exist. The collection features 253 shirts, which works out to an average of more than $7,900 per T-shirt.

The collection is being offered as a private sale, meaning a buyer would purchase it directly from Christie's rather than through auction. The exact asking price is not public, but Christie's said the collection is valued at over $2 million.

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