* Shares down 8% in early trading

* Net outflows of 2.3 bln stg in 6 months to June

July 30 (Reuters) - Shares in London-based Jupiter Fund Management slid on Friday after clients pulled out more money from the asset manager during the first half of the year.

Jupiter's stock price slid 8% to its lowest in more than a year, and by 0856 GMT it was amongst worst performers on the FTSE 250 midcap index.

Net outflows from the fund accelerated to 2.3 billion pounds ($3.21 billion) in the six months to June from 2 billion pounds a year earlier. A huge chunk of that - 1.7 billion pounds - was from its mutual funds.

In contrast, larger rival Schroders earlier this week said it had seen net inflows of 6.4 billion pounds to mutual funds.

Jupiter boss Andrew Formica told Reuters the outflows were partly due to institutional clients shifting to different investment mandates.

"Outside of that, the area that is most disappointing would be UK and European equity ... we just haven't seen the demand from clients who want to allocate to this," he said.

Money managers have had a generally good year as rock bottom interest rates and a boom in savings during the pandemic led people to invest more with them.

Jupiter also joined industry peers in reporting record assets under management, which were up 54% to 60.3 billion pounds, boosting underlying profit by 38% to 78.2 million pounds. But concerns over its net outflows spooked investors.

"Gross flows are said to be higher, which might offer some encouragement, but consensus already assumes a recovery, and expected things to be better already," Panmure Gordon analysts said.

Jupiter said the integration of rival Merian Global Investors, which it bought last year, was now complete, with cost savings significantly exceeding its initial expectations. It kept its interim dividend unchanged at 7.9 pence per share.

($1 = 0.7156 pounds) (Reporting by Muvija M in Bengaluru; Editing by Uttaresh.V, John O'Donnell and Jan Harvey)