Ron Luniewski, the president of the account-wagering company XpressBet since 2002, will be leaving the company effective immediately, according to several officials within the company’s parent organization who spoke on Friday. Luniewski was one of the longest-serving employees of XpressBet’s privately held parent company, The Stronach Group, and that company’s publicly traded predecessors. He was first hired to oversee XpressBet shortly after it was launched in 2002 after a tenure at a competing account-wagering company, Youbet.com., and over the years he has built up a reputation as one of the most knowledgeable betting managers in the U.S. industry. XpressBet notified employees that Luniewski would be leaving the company on Friday after he had met with Tim Ritvo, The Stronach Group’s chief operating officer, at XpressBet’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, according to three officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications. Ritvo said on Friday that he “could not comment” on the matter. In a brief telephone conversation on Friday afternoon, Luniewski said he would not comment. Several of the officials said that the resignation came as a surprise, despite recent talk within the company about management’s purported dissatisfaction with the performance of XpressBet and its fit within The Stronach Group, a sprawling racing company with numerous divisions. XpressBet, considered one of the “Big Three” national account-wagering companies, operated as its own division within The Stronach Group, despite some synergies with TSG’s simulcast-marketing division, Monarch Content Management, and AmTote, the bet-processing company. XpressBet provides bet-processing services for Daily Racing Form’s own account-wagering operation, DRF Bets. XpressBet and its wagering partners had total handle of $782.6 million in 2017, according to records from the Oregon Racing Commission, which regulates a handful of major account-wagering providers. The 2017 figure was a 7.3 percent gain on XpressBet’s 2016 handle figure, but still well below the market leader, Churchill Downs-owned twinspires.com, which had 2017 handle of $1.708 billion, according to the record. An official within TSG said that negotiations over Luniewski’s exit agreement would likely be completed by early next week.