The FTSE Group is making several changes to its family of indexes. Early on Thursday morning, the firm said it was promoting two key markets and demoting a third.

The countries most directly impacted will be:

• The United Arab Emirates will be upgraded to secondary emerging market status.

• Malta will be promoted to frontier market status.

• Argentina will be demoted to frontier market status.

In addition, FTSE is putting several countries on its watch list for the next 12 months. That's considered the first step in changing designations and movement into different indexes. Those include (including possible changes):

• Czech Republic, from secondary to advanced emerging markets.

• Malaysia, from secondary to advanced emerging markets.

• Turkey, from secondary to advanced emerging markets.

The other major announcement is that the following will remain on 12-month watch lists:

• China "A" shares, for possible inclusion as a secondary emerging market.

• Colombia, for possble shift to frontier status from secondary emerging markets.

• Greece, for possible change to advance emerging markets status from developed.

• Kazakhstan, for potential inclusion as a frontier market.

• Kuwait, for possible inclusion as a secondary emerging market.

• Taiwan, for possible change to developed market status from advanced emerging markets status.

• Ukraine, for possible inclusion as a frontier market.

The next FTSE update is scheduled for March 2010.