By MarketBeat Staff

A growing proportion of U.S. firms are seeing credit-default-swap counterparty risk as a serious threat to global markets. and think another major financial company will go under due amid the global-markets crisis, according to a study by research firm Greenwich Associates.

The studys results, which say the proportion seeing CDS counterparty risk as a serious threat is approaching 85%, highlight the perceived concern of another financial firm going down. Only 27% of the institutions surveyed think there wont be another casualty along the lines of Bear Stearns, Greenwich consultant Frank Feenstra said in a statement.

The research firm said of the 146 U.S. and European banks, hedge funds and investors it surveyed, most believe another major financial-services firm will fail as a result of the ongoing crisis in global markets and they expect it to happen sooner rather than later .

Almost 60% of the respondents expect another big financial firm will collapse within the next six months. while another 15% see it happening in six to 12 months.

If you are looking for a silver lining in these findings. it seems that most institutions think we are currently in the most dangerous period for global financial-services firms, Feenstra said. Perhaps if the markets can make it through the next six months, the level of pessimism may begin to subside .

Greenwich said nearly 80% of the firms in the study say their banks have tightened margin or collateral requirements since the outbreak of the global credit crunch. More than a quarter of those companies said the new requirements have caused them to reduce their trading activity.

Concerns about counterparty risk have caused institutions to cut back on their CDS use. Among fixed-income survey participants that employ such swaps, 62% said higher counterparty risk has caused them to limit their use.

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of the firms in the survey said they try to limit their concentration of exposure to a single counterparty. while three-quarters said the establishment of a centralized clearing entity would be effective in mitigating credit-default swap counterparty risk.

In Europe, institutions are at least slightly more sanguine , Greenwich said compared with U.S. firms surveyed. It said just more than 55% of the European companies surveyed see CDS counterparty risk as a significant danger.

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