The fixed-income markets are enormous, however innovation in this sector has trailed that in the much smaller equities markets. Recently, a number of alternate trading systems (ATS) have been introduced, many of which use the Internet as an enabling infrastructure. Despite the size and impact of these markets, there is a surprising lack of IS research in this field, yet the context provides a potentially fruitful test bed for e-commerce and market formation theory. This work introduces the motivation / ability framework for considering the likelihood of organizations in succeeding at forming fixed-income e-commerce markets, offers a theory-based discussion of the challenges and opportunities for firms seeking to create fixed-income ATS, highlights issues of system ownership, and uses examples to illustrate evolutionary trends.