LONDON: European shares opened sideways on Monday, with Madrid's bourse underperforming its peers for another session as the ongoing crisis in Catalonia continued to take its toll.

The pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.1 per cent while Spain's benchmark IBEX fell 0.5 per cent, with banks, such as BBVA down 1.2 pct and Banco Santander down 0.8 per cent, taking the most points off the index.

Other European bourses traded in different directions with London's FTSE 100 retreating 0.1 per cent and Paris's CAC 40 and Germany's DAX broadly flat.

Securitas was the top performer of the STOXX with a 4.2 per cent rise after it reported third-quarter earnings, followed by British engineering group GKN, up 3.3 per cent, after a report it was considering splitting into two listed companies.

A profit warning sent British car dealership chain Pendragon 19 per cent lower.

The number of profit warnings issued by British companies jumped to 75 in the third quarter, the biggest quarterly rise in almost six years as economic pressures weighed on retailers and support service companies, business services group EY said on Sunday.