Focus today will rest on the Rengo wage announcement. Our onshore Japan analyst stated the results should out at around 2pm Japan time (0500GMT). Bloomberg notes that Rengo will hold a media briefing at 4:15pm local time today, see this link for more details.

• The union group stated last week it was demanding a 5.85% increase, on average, for this year. A number of companies announced on Wednesday they had agreed to full union demands.
• Japan Bank Nomura stated yesterday that a wage increase of around 5.1% is likely to be announced by Rengo (see this BBG link). This would still represent a step up from last year's year (initially at 3.8%, before being revised down slightly).
• FinMin Sukuzi's comments have also crossed the wires. He notes that wage hikes this year are outpacing those of last year and that strong wage moves should spread to smaller firms (BBG).