A whistleblower who won record damages at a tribunal after being unfairly sacked has seen his award cut by £90,000 on appeal.

But Robert Sutton will still expect to receive a payout of almost £600,000 after winning his case against Creechurch Capital Ltd.

Robert Sutton, 32, was employed as a portfolio manager by Creechurch Capital Ltd from 2013 until February 2016 when he lost his £42,000-a-year job.

CCL, then part of the Knox Group of Companies founded by multi-millionaire Doug Barrowman, claimed Mr Sutton was dismissed for gross misconduct for using the social media platform Whatsapp to talk to clients.

But the employment tribunal found he was sacked for discussing concerns about the company with the regulator, the Financial Services Authority.

It awarded compensation totalling £685,339 plus interest, including exemplary damages of £75,000, saying this was justified by CCL’s ’persistent and deliberate course of misconduct’. But the company appealed against the decision to award compensation and the scale of the damages and costs awarded.

It argued that the tribunal was wrong to hold that the loss was caused by the dismissal when it would have happened anyway because of Creechurch’s decision that Mr Sutton was guilty of gross misconduct.

And it said the tribunal should not have awarded aggravated damages of £15,000 in addition to the £5,000 for injury to feelings or the £75,000 for exemplary damages.

But Deemster Rosen QC rejected all the grounds of appeal except in relation to the £90,000 worth of aggravated and exemplary damages, leaving the financial loss and the £5,000 for injury to feelings.

He said the decision of the tribunal that Creechurch set out to dismiss Mr Sutton for gross misconduct for their own improper reasons was ’unchallengeable’, and to argue otherwise without evidence was to ’grope for straws’.

He added: ’I see no reason in principle why the capital value of the employment which was lost as a result of the wrongful and unfair dismissal should not be taken into the calculation.

’What Mr Sutton lost financially was both his periodic income and the capital value of the book of business that he would have built up had it not been for the wrongful dismissal.’

But the Deemster allowed two grounds of appeal relating to the aggravated and exemplary damages.

He said there does not appear to have been any evidence as to how other injury was sustained so as to be the subject of compensation, nor as to the basis for an exemplary or punishment award.