There has been a global growth in the private equity segment over the last fifteen year. The current levels of global liquidity have facilitated the capital flows and emerging countries have been among the beneficiaries. Brazil, has been slow to develop in the private equity segment. Therefore, the objective of this study is to uncover the main factors that have arrested the development of this sector of the capital market in the country in the past 15 years. Research on specialized bibliography and interviews allowed us to pinpoint the five main factors: (a) difficulties to exit investments, due to a small market, shortage of strategic buyers and difficulties in creating an open capital market; (b) high interest rates, which increase costs and reduce applications in production; (c) economical and political instability, which generates uncertainty and scares investors; (d) inefficiency and slowness of the judicial system, unable to efficiently settle disputes and, the lack of alternative instruments, such as arbitration chambers, to evaluate and resolve disputes; (e) the informality of the production chain, that creates an environment of unfair competition which, in turn, dampens productivity and economic growth. Despite all these problems, the professionals believe that there could be room in the Brazilian market for the development of the private equity segment. However, before this can happen, conditions such as, stability of the economy and economic growth, better alternatives to exit businesses, modernization of the judiciary and improvement of the legislation have to be attained.