The primary aim of the article is to point out the impact of economic crisis on private equity industry in Poland. The attempt to identify opportunities and threats stemming from the economic situation for the firms which operate in this part of the financial market has been also taken up. The major hypothesis is that the economic crisis leads to slowing down the development of the private equity industry in Poland. The verification of this hypothesis has been carried out based on the analysis of data published by the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA).