At the end of 1992, the Merseybus parent company Merseyside Transport Ltd was being prepared for sale by Merseyside PTA. Prior to this MerseyRider had been formed to operate Mersytravel contracts and compete with other operators at a lower cost structure - payscales in particular, than those within Merseybus. At the beginning of 1993 Merseybus was sold to its management and employees in an Employee Share Ownership Plan and in turn Merseyside Transport became MTL Trust Holdings and quickly began refocusing the Merseybus operation.