Capital investment overseas amounted to roughly 30 Billion among the top 3 European powers. Britain (20), France (6)and then Germany (4). Half of French capital went to Russia, British capital in Russia amounted to 1/3 of the French, with German investors at half the British. French capital was also larger than either of the others in the OE. They also had significant capital in AH.
If you change the dynamics of investment you will alter the situation such that Russia is more than just a little less developed and both AH and the OE will also be correspondingly stronger in terms of everything from military supplies to industry but particularly infrastructure.
I'm sorry but this is completely wrong.
Total foreign investment in Russia from 1890-1914 totaled 3,800,000,000 rubles. This comes from Paul Gregory and is among the highest estimates of foreign investments around. It assumes a large amount of foreign travel and counts exports of precious metals as foreign investment (Gatrell, The Tsarist Economy p. 225)
Not all of this came from France- if we add Belgian to nominally French capital we would get about 50%. This overstates the case. Not all Belgian capital is French and not all nominally French capital is really French. An unknown amount is Russian taking advantage of tax breaks. Bonds sold on the Paris exchange were bought by investors everywhere.
This is also private capital seeking private gain. People invested in Russia because the Russians paid the highest rate among the Great Powers.
Direct foreign investment is not what it appears. The number is inflated because the Russian business tax was based on the rate of return on nominal capital. The issuance of shares was a nightmare requiring the personal approval of the Tsar. For these reasons, businesses tended to inflate their nominal shares and never issued the full amount the product of these investors at a very low rate of returm.
Many investments were done because of such high subsidies that they represent net economic losses to the country- i.e. Russia would have been better off without them. The steel industry would be a good example. Russia put an insane tariff on steel that raised the price to three times the international rate. The government agreed to purchase
Russia would get many economic benefits from a German alliance. First, the need of the army are greatly reduced. Russia spent 700,000,000 rubles on her army in 1900 in cash and kind. From 1908-1914, Russia spends 3 billion rubles cash on the army alone. Well over half of this was to defend against Germany. With a German alliance, that spending can be slashed and Russia has already gained more than the entire foreign investment- investments which earned interest.
More likely is that much of this is spent on the Navy- Russia spent 300,000,000 rubles on naval construction 1898-1904. Doubling it would make the Russian fleet invincible against Japan. Japan was already spending more on defense than she collected in taxes so its hard to see how they can match a Russian build up. Avoiding the Japanese War (or winning it and collecting a huge indemnity) solves all of Russia's economic problems and is most likely
We also need to remember the large economic benefits that Germany gave to her alliance partners. The biggest was tariff concessions- originally given to Italy, the Germans matched them to Austria to preserve balance in the alliance. These are considerable. In OTL, the Russians paid 40% on grain exported to Germany.