Corporate chiefs at some of Japan’s biggest companies have called on the government to reclassify Covid-19 as endemic and lift some of Asia’s strictest pandemic restrictions to help unleash two years of pent-up demand for cross-border mergers and acquisitions.

Their push comes as senior M&A bankers and lawyers say they expect an increase of deal proposals after a ‘golden week’ of national holidays in early May as corporate Japan goes on the global acquisition trail.

While other rich nations moved swiftly to relax most entry rules after a wave of the Omicron variant, the administration of prime minister Fumio Kishida has kept the country’s borders mostly shut and capped foreign arrivals to 7,000 a day. M&A advisers said this has hurt Japan’s economic competitiveness.